I'm just completing my 2nd week of a return to work program. Luckily I only work 3 days/week. I find my biggest issue post surgery other than the leg swelling, is the fatigue. Sometimes it's overwhelming.
I'm surprised to find it's emotional fatigue more so than the physicial fatigue. It's not really even work related for the most part. What I mean by emotional fatigue, is that most days I don't think about the Melanoma as much as I used to. But since I've returned to work, I have everyone (kindly) coming up to me and wanting to know how I am. Telling me they are glad I'm back to work. And some of them actually want to know the bigger story and want some details. So I find myself sharing. I've always found that sharing is healing for me. But I also find myself having to deal with what happened to me over and over again. I certainly don't mind sharing, and like I said, it's healing, but it can be emotionally draining. And it's something I didn't think about before I returned to work. And because I work with over 100 different staff, I see different people every day. So that's a lot of times reliving my experiences. Just something to think about if you are in a position to go back to work after being off recovering from surgery and various other treatments. Luckily I work with a fabulous group of people and they are not treating me any different from before. It's nice to feel that I'm still normal.
I did find this week at 6 hours/day more tiring than last week at 4 hours/day. Yesterday I went up and down 6 flights of stairs - not all at the same time but within a few minutes of each other. Now, that's not much of a feat, I hear some people say, but for me, with muscle missing from my calf, it is. I'm also not ashamed to say that I'm not in tip top shape either.
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