As others have said it we are all different ...
personal experience
I had surgery on July 2 and figured on going to work full time the first full week in August when school
started back ... they held the full time position open for me until the end of August and filled it when I told
them I wouldn't be back anytime soon ... at that point I had to walk all the time touching a wall or hand on
someones shoulder (looking back I should have gotten a walking stick )
I had been working in the school cafeteria ... from 6:00 -9:45 and again from 10:30 til 12:30 you don't stop
moving ...from 7:15 til 7:45 we feed about 200 kids breakfast and clean up and start lunch...some lunch is started when
we started cooking breakfast at 6:00...we have 9:45-10:15 to eat lunch (or rather brunch) and go to rest room ...
then lunch starts and it is crazy...
the wash window is the slowest but still fast paced and you have to keep up with the kids shoving stuff at you rinsing it off ,
sorting , putting on appropriate rack and then pushing rack onto conveyor to go to the dish washer... run pull stuff off the clean
end and re-stack on cart and run it to the far end of line down a 30 foot hall so the clean trays and utensils can be used
again...
we have a small cafeteria that was built when the school had about 125 kids K-12... school has been added
to several times and we now have 500 kids and not enough room for a lot of feeding equipment ... they just added
refrigeration and cooking euipment.... all the movement and speed would kill me first day ... balance and headaches have kept me from returning ... and I had to
turn down the full time position when it was offered ... everyone rotates ...if I dumped a load of trays it would be no big deal...
if I was on the line and dumped a tray of of fried chicken or pizza it would be ... a tray of pizzas is three layers of 4 pizzas ...
each pizza is about 2 pounds ... 32 pounds is not alot but the size of the trays and they way you have to spread your arms to
hold and carry from prep to oven then from there to warmers was hard before surgery and would toss my balance off
one day pre surgery , I used one of the pedometers the school uses to track miles walked by students in BC-BS Walking Works
health program and I walked approximately 6 miles in that time ...from freezers at far end of hall to the other end where we
add in clean trays is only 50 feet ... the speed and all the turning is something I am not able to do anymore ...
all that said is just to say what I had been doing and before surgery and had planned on taking on full time I still can't do 22
months later ... so now I go to school as a volunteer and free up teachers from having to do stuff like making copies , leaving class
to run Chapter or Title students in lower grade to the places they should be , tutor etc ... I have subbed some in class rooms
but mostly half days ... just started lyrica in January and have had few headaches since , which is what has
kept me from subbing alot or doing whole days ... this past two weeks I have subbed for 5 1/2 days for teachers trying to use
up paid days they haven't used before school lets out ... also had 16 hours of volunteer time logged ... I am hoping by the time
school starts back in August I can apply for a full time aide job ...
we also own a farm and I am kinda useless here anymore ...or rather just not as useful ...I don't do sorting of cows because
they are alot bigger than I am and getting trampled is not anything I want to try
... when we vaccinated a few weeks ago it
meant my husband had alot of extra leg work but I made myself a step up and platform kind a thing on outside of chute and
could load syringes and poke cows from above them , then pour on liquid wormer ...
(don't I find glamorous work) ...
while it was a vital part of what we needed to do I felt something not quite anger at not being able to work the pen and
sort out animals and head them down the chute ... it also took about 2 hours longer
my advice would be to plan for the 2 months but not hold yourself to it ... if you can start back sooner great ...if not give
yourself time ... I beat myself up and would make myself depressed thinking of what I couldn't do and wasn't seeing what I
could do ...had to slow down and take stock and give myself permission to not feel good and not be as useful as I thought
I should be ... when we worked the herd I caught myself getting into that self pity mode for what are now it appears
permanent changes in my life as far as balance ,movement and speed issues ...
like MAlegent said she had to go do something to keep boredom at bay ... I go in on my own time and work fro free
because if I sat in the house all day I would die of boredom ... and we have no neighbors to visit or much to see besides
cows and 50 chickens ...a few cats and dogs ... I need to be out and around people to keep my mind active and working ...
or else boredom leads to over thinking which leads to irritation then depression ...
I hope you have a speedy recovery and get back to what ever it is you do soon ... but as we have all learned it is
different for us all ... take your time and don't push yourself until like me you are beating yourself up... find what you can
still do , do it and work up
