Into the groove

So it has now been 5 weeks back at work! It is tough going but glad I am doing it. I am still not sitting to work and am predominantly working from home to save the hour commute each way. It has been a phased return and since the first 2 weeks I have been working 4.5 hours a day, all stood up. This essentially takes all day as by the time you have had a couple of breaks to lay down and have lunch etc it is soon late afternoon. Until I can sit for 30 mins or so it will be hard to work more I think. 

Work have been great and it has been nice being back into what feels more like a normal routine. However, after 2 months of rest and recuperation I have had to be careful managing day to day stuff that is now less on my terms than the previous weeks. The cumulative effect of standing every day has caused quite a bit tighntness into my lumbar spine so I have been trying to regularly move. I have continued to swim once a week and now am able to do some basic yoga to keep my spine moving as well as stretch out the scar tissue at the operation site. I have probably been walking less as I have not had the time and am stood most of the day so tend to collapse on the sofa when I get the chance!!

As for the sitting I have continued to improve slowly. The pain/discomfort ebbs and flows and can be hard to predict what causes it etc, so I am just using my common sense and accepting that sometimes it increases without an obvious cause. At this stage I think it is important that I keep moving (within reason). The Professor had told to simply slowly return to normal life - do exercises that do not lead to pain and sit if it does not cause pain. He stressed that it is important not to stimulate the pain so if anything does, either sitting or exercise, then stop it. Therefore I tend to do give myself a breather from any exercise or sitting for a few days at a time and then go again. It seems to work ok, but it really is a game of patience. I have achieved some important milestones though - eating my dinner sat down, taken a short car ride sat in the back (on my coccyx cushion) as well as a record 16 lengths in the pool.

This weekend is a bank holiday in the UK so I took the Friday off in order to have 4 days in a row where I am not stood at a computer for prolonged periods. I have come back to the countryside where I grew up - I think the fresh air and space do me the world of good! It is also nice to have a change of scene as I have spent a long time in our little flat over the last months and my poor wife deserves a break from me too!! Tomorrow I am taking the train back to London which is slightly daunting as it is a 2.5 hour journey so it better not have delays!! I will write more soon 😊.

Back to work!

Still no speculating on the success of the operation as it is still too early to say, but I thought it would be useful to talk about my first two weeks back at work. I went back exactly 10 weeks since the operation, on a phased return. My employer has been very flexible and the idea was that I would start on just 2.5 hours a day from home and work it up as it becomes more possible. I have found that I have been able to do a little more than this without it having a detrimental effect on progress. I have done between 3 and 4.5 hours a day and hope that I can increase this a little over the coming weeks. Increasing it will be hard as I am still not sitting down for any prolonged period (just 4 or 5 mins two times a day) so all of my work is done standing up. My sense is the sitting will come in time and I should not push it too much. It certainly causes some discomfort in the pelvic floor as well as a soreness into the scar area.

It has been really good to be back doing some work and interacting with people, albeit remotely for now. Even if I cannot increase my hours over the next week or two I hope to go into the office a little more - to normalise things and increase my ability to move more etc. Key to being able to go back to work a bit ahead of schedule has been been being able to do it from home. I also think I have benefited as a result of doing a good job of resting as much as possible in the immediate weeks after the operation, before then gradually increasing the walking and mobility from about week 4 or 5. The yoga and swimming that I was doing a lot of before the op meant that my fitness, strength and flexibility were pretty good and therefore I did not lose too much in the weeks that I was bed and sofa bound. I know from other people's experiences that this can be a real vicious circle so I am grateful for the the work I put in beforehand. 

I went swimming last week! Very cautiously, just 10 slow lengths. It seemed fine and was so nice to be in the water and do something normal again. I tried not to kick my legs too much and let my arms do the work (front crawl). As my flexibility has started to return I have also been doing some very gentle stretches that I learned from yoga. A physio mate of mine impressed on me the need to very gently begin to stretch that area in order to ease out the scar tissue that will be building up. The increased body awareness gained from doing yoga means I am quite confident in knowing what I can and cannot do. It is definitely trail and error though! I have also continued with the mindfulness meditations on a daily basis, particularly since starting back at work when the need for a quiet few minutes has increased a touch!! As mentioned before I have found these very helpful - the body will do what it does and I have little control over that, but I can to an extent control how I feel about it all, and remaining positive is definitely a good thing! I will update this again in a few weeks with how things continue to progress.