Back to Work

One question that I didn't directly address in my previous posts was when I planned on returning to work. I'm a couple of days late on reporting that as I returned yesterday! My original plan was to return one week after the surgery which would have been last Thursday. I decided to change that plan on Wednesday evening as I still hadn't made it through a day without laying down. Since I can't lay down at work, I opted to wait until Monday to return. Taking Thursday and Friday off proved to be beneficial. I continued my twice daily walks and observed my normal restrictions. On Saturday, I didn't have to lay down at all.

Returning to work has not been that bad. I kept up with emails while at home so I had a pretty good idea of where everything was at with work. I do my best to get up and walk around every 15-20 minutes, but sometimes I lose track of time. One unexpected disadvantage of returning to work is heeled shoes. I have dress shoes with about a 1 inch heel. This is just enough to change the angle of my back and cause some discomfort when walking. I intend on getting new ones, but haven't had a chance yet. Plus, I haven't seen dress shoes for men without a heel that don't look like moccasins.

Sleeping at night is getting much better. I now have the strength, and lack of sharp pain, to roll over without making too much of an effort. I still have a little trouble when first getting in bed for the evening about relaxing my back. It seems to take a while and I get a couple of bursts of moderate pain until the muscles finally give up. I figure these spasms will go away in time, but I am going to mention them to the neurosurgeon on Friday.

The incision looks pretty good too. Although not prescribed, I have been putting a light coating of Polysporin over the incision. I became a believer in this stuff last year when I got a cut over my eye. I was getting out of my truck in the garage and left the driver's door open while I threw a can in the recycle bin. When I turned around to get back in the truck, I smacked my left eye, under the brow, against the top corner of the door. It immediately split open and began bleeding.

It took about 20 minutes for the bleeding to stop and the edges of the cut to stay together. At first, any time I relaxed my eye, the cut would split back open. Once it was finally closed, I went to the store and bought Polysporin. I used it twice a day. By the 4th day, it was almost impossible to tell that I ever had a cut there. Who knows if it will make any difference on the incision, but it's only $3 or $4 and shouldn't hurt anything.

I am getting antsy to start bending at my waist again. Everyone preaches bending with your knees and not your back. Try putting socks and shoes on without bending your back though. It doesn't work. Given that, Jane and Holly are still helping with my socks.

Unrelated to anything else I've discussed, a tree in our yard is dying. I bought and planted the tree a year ago on May 6th. It was a very nice Serviceberry trained to grow as a tree with a single leader. It has white flowers in the spring, red berries with green leaves in the summer and turns fire-orange in the fall. This spring, we had a late freeze that really hurt almost all of the trees in our area. This tree was not spared, but did produce berries and green leaves. In the last couple of weeks it took a turn for the worse. Leaves turned orange and then crusty brown. No new growth is present.

I took pictures and went to the nursery where I purchased it. They said that it looked like a fungus and sold me a bottle of fungicide and told me to prune all of the dead limbs. Since I can't do any work like that, I asked a tree company we use to take a look at it. Their verdict: it's a gonner. They said it was planted too deeply and the roots weren't getting oxygen. The arborist dug down to show me where the root flare was - about 6 inches below the soil. When I planted it, I carefully followed the nursery directions and planted the burlap of the rootball about 1 1/2" above the surrounding soil. The arborist noted that the nursery had piled soil on top of the root flare before balling it for protection. The net effect is that I followed the directions, but my reference point was wrong and the tree is dead. He told me that the next time I get a tree, I should dig down around the base of the tree until I can see where the roots began to separate from the trunk, even if it means removing soil from the root ball. Then, I should plant the tree with that part at ground level.

Once the final green leaves turn orange, we are going to have to figure out how to get the tree replanted. It has a 2 year warranty, but I am in no shape to dig it up and plant a new one. Time for a landscaping company?