when to go back to work

just curious how soon do most go back to work after pm? a few weeks or a month or longer?

how soon do you feel back to 100%?

i feel fine, just get a little tired after exertion and want to go back to work.

9 Comments

I felt do great after my

by janetinak - 2012-09-13 03:09:21

AV node ablation & PM for Afib I went back to my "sitting down" job ( as my Dad used to call this type of work) in 3 days. Tired but OK.

Janet

pardon the extra word "do" in

by janetinak - 2012-09-13 03:09:47

title above.

Not awake yet :-)

Depends on the kind of work

by ElectricFrank - 2012-09-14 01:09:38

Aside from needing to avoid raising your pacer side arm above shoulder level for a few weeks, there is nothing to keep you from going back anytime. Just use common sense and listen to your body. If it is painful to do something then back off a bit.

frank

desk job at home

by JustKrs - 2012-09-14 06:09:43

i work a "desk job" in software and these days work 100% from home.
I wasn't working till about 10 days after the pacemaker was put in.

My recovery time was affected by two main factors...
one: that I was in a lot of pain, so I didn't go back to working until I was off of the Vicodin.

two: that i am apparently VERY hard to sedate. So it took my body longer than some others to get back to baseline and feel normal after that much consious sedation meds. The meds are out of your system in about 24 hours or so, but my system just took a long time to get back to normal.

what kind of job

by Shell - 2012-09-14 07:09:34

How soon you go back really depends on what you do. I work in a school with special need students and went back after a week. (I didn't have to lift ant students that year) If you have a desk job you may feel like going back after a few days. If it's a more strenuous job and includes lifting you may need to wait until 6 weeks have passed to make sure the leads are secure.

pain and code...

by JustKrs - 2012-09-15 10:09:27

Frank,

yup! work kinda expects that we check out email while out of the office - but i would only reply to folks on my immediate team that know me well and knew i was a few days after surgery and still kinda outta it :D
Definitely didn't write code or talk to my clients that week!

I have 3/4ths of an engineering degree, and then later finished a degree in CS and IS. I do data integration work between our system and our client's other offline systems.

Good way to go at it.

by ElectricFrank - 2012-09-15 11:09:33

Sounds like an interesting job. I did some of that as a consultant during my teaching years. People find more ways to format data!

I'm one of those weirdo's who never finished a degree. I put the the letters NDD (No Damned Degree) after my name. I worked my way up in the engineering field by being willing to tackle projects that had crashed using common approaches. Since it was already accepted that the task was impossible I couldn't lose. If I solved the problem I was a hero. If not what could they expect when some top people couldn't either.

If you don't get back to feeling normal a couple of weeks post implant I would get after the docs. I forgot to ask you if you have had your first programming checkup up yet. The pacers come from the factory with default settings that are designed to provide interstitial support for a wide range of patients. They rarely are anywhere near optimum for the individual. Some of the docs are lazy about having you back in a week or two, since that first checkup is often figured into the surgery fee.

frank

Effect of pain on thinking

by ElectricFrank - 2012-09-15 12:09:44

JustKrs,
During the weeks leading up to back surgery in the 1980's I was in a lot of pain. I don't do well with pain meds. All they do is make me groggy with the result being I'm painfully groggy. So after one quick try I quit using them.

Anyway, I'm a hardware and software engineer and was working on a system design at the time. I set my self up where I could lay on a massage table propped up with monitor and keyboard, and kept working. Several years later when I went back into the software to make some changes I wondered who the idiot was who wrote that trash! It's amazing it worked. It was a bunch of assembly code on an Apple II.

The experience has been good for me to realize that even without meds my brain was being affected by the pain.

frank

Do not rush !

by lahbigbro6 - 2012-09-20 12:09:01

I had a full-time job and it depends on your company. My company gave me 8 weeks, it was the best 8 weeks ! I watched the NY Yankees games. Take it easy and enjoy.

You know you're wired when...

You are always wired and full of energy.

Member Quotes

I have a well tuned pacer. I hardly know I have it. I am 76 year old, hike and camp alone in the desert. I have more energy than I have had in a long time. The only problem is my wife wants to have a knob installed so she can turn the pacer down.