I'm due to get a hernia fixed sometime between now and christmas (no date yet but was told to expect about 8 - 12 weeks)
Now I'm self employed, work alone mostly and do a lot of steel and plywood fabrication - lots of lifting shifting and shoving. I've been getting a fair bit of conflicting advice over recovery time.
The surgery is expected to be a gauze applied in a key hole manner, in the pre-op interview the nurse charmingly referred to this as "3 of 4 stabs" adding "you gingers tend to bleed a lot". Nice!
I understand that the keyhole procedure is more disruptive than regular butchery as theres a lot of poking and prodding to get the gauze into position, but that its also ultimately more successful. However I'll be consenting to both/either keyhole and meat-cleaver procedures incase they need to change plans while I'm on the table.
Now the surgeon in my initial consultation seemed to suggest that recovery would be very quick, and that while things might be uncomfortable I'm not just going to come undone if I get back to work. But I might not have been paying too much attention as there were also two astoundingly pretty student doctors taking turns to poke my belly button while we were discussing all this, and he might not have grasped what I mean by 'work'. However the nurse at the pre-op reckoned I should expect around 6 weeks or more before I start chucking 40kg sheets of ply around again (and to be honest I didn't tell her they weighed that much of that I sometimes shift hundreds of them in a day).
I've even read advice to not even raise your voice after surgery!
Now I've no qualms about pain (grrrrrrr! get me!) but I need to know what to expect so that I can try and limit the damage to business, or at least try and pitch for/ schedule more of the design and consultative work I sometimes do.
Now I know someone on here had the same surgery because it was thanks to that tread that I realised my bump I'd been ignoring for a decade was a hernia, but I think the thread must have been pre-hack because its not coming up in the search.
So.... what are people's experiences?
