Re: Surgery scheduled for 08/15

[Guest guest]

Hi Debs,

I'm a accounting/finance department coordinator (equiv to supervisor

or assistant manager in our company structure) as well. It wasn't

easy going back, as I didn't have the high energy levels that I did

pre-op. The hardest thing is talking, that really tired me out fast

and made my face sore. If your company will allow you to go back half

days, that would be the best - mine did not, at least I got no

guarantees and I didn't want to give up my STD.

I talked to my boss and told him that I wasn't sure how my recovery

would go as I'd never had major surgery before. I said " 3 weeks seems

to be the average for the type of work I'm having done - it could be

more or it could be less " . My insurance approved 6 weeks, my surgeon

would have approved more as he said " it takes 6-8 weeks for the bone

to heal " . He usually approves 3 weeks for his double jaw patients (I

had upper/lower/genio).

I did have a great recovery, don't get me wrong, but your energy

levels won't be back to normal for awhile. I did lots of things at

home during my recovery but nothing stressful like my job. When I did

go back, I worked some mega-overtime in the following week and had

rebound swelling - it took about 3 days to recover from that dumb

move alone.

I think that surgeons tend to underestimate the amount of time

required for recovery. My advice is to try to negotiate as much time

off as possible - it won't be a disaster going back earlier, but you

should give your body as much time to heal as possible - you don't

get a second chance at that!

Best wishes,