I really wasn’t planning on writing a weekly update past week 12. However, returning to work turned out to be the ultimate test of my new disc, so I thought others might be interested on how I did. First of all, I work in a VERY busy Emergency Department, and things have not slowed down while I was gone the past 3 ½ months. Due to the way the pay period was scheduled, I ended up working almost my entire two-weeks’ worth of hours in one week (Wednesday to Wednesday). Needless to say, this week has been a huge challenge and, I am so tired.
So, what does a typical work-day of mine look like? I work the mid-shift from 11:00 am to 11:30 pm, so when I arrive, the ED is usually already buzzing, and I hit “the ground running”. We have to juggle four (often very sick) patients at a time, decide who to see first and who has to wait, start IVs and draw blood, collect various bodily fluids, blood cultures, and do full work-ups. If the ED is so busy that it takes a couple hours before the doctor can assess my patient, I must decide which labs need to be done and order them myself. I get patients of various sizes in an out of bed, maneuver my way through small treatment rooms (in sometimes awkward positions), while holding my bladder for hours at end. You just never know what’s going to happen next and what to expect when walking into your patient’s room. For instance, I hear the pulse ox alarm go off in a room, and as I walk in, my patient looks at me wide-eyed, gasping “I can’t breathe!”. In the meantime, I get informed that my other patient started bleeding profusely (squirting blood, actually) from his incision site again (gotta love blood thinners). “Oh, and you’ll get a chest-pain in Room 17”…. I do have to say that I’ll work with some amazing nurses, and team work makes the dream work 🙂
The good news is that I didn’t have any back pain per se. However, especially during the first couple of days I could feel my mid-back and shoulders tense up to a point of being tender to the touch (especially around my remaining “sore spot”). It worried me a tad but as I mentioned before, there is no light duty in my ED, and I do need a paycheck. Working 12-hour shifts left me also unable to do much in terms of rehabilitation or PT, but I did my stretches in the morning and at night after work. Thank goodness, my back would “recover” overnight, and as the days went on, my tolerance level increased as well. But I am not going to lie: being “thrown to the wolves” like this was scary, hard, and stressful. Don’t get me wrong: I love my job but being off work for such a long time with my main focus being recovery from ADR surgery, it was – let’s call it- intense to switch back into work-mode like this. But hey, it’s also nice to have a paycheck again….
The big challenge from this point on is to find a workout routine I can stick with in conjunction with work, and, starting later in August, graduate school. This first week back to work has been rather intense and (for the most part) unusual. During this coming week, I will hopefully come up with a plan that I can stick to. In the meantime, I finally got some activity today: I went on a 15-mile bike ride, which is a 50% increase in distance compared to my last one. I would say, I am off to a good start!
Outstanding!