Back to Work in the Ninth Week of Recovery

I started back to work on Monday of this week for the first time since Sep 14. I'm working six hour days until Thanksgiving, and then I'll start full time work again on Nov 30. I worked Mon-Thu this week, took Friday as a vacation day, and felt pretty good all week. However, as the week wore on, I wore down a bit and by Thursday afternoon I was feeling the burn. Guess I'm not quite back to full speed yet, but nobody (except maybe me :-) expected me to be.

It was sure good to see old friends I haven't seen in so long and to reconnect with colleagues again. I'm slowly catching up with where my work team has gone since I left. Several changes and many new plans to absorb. I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of things again, but a lot has happened in the two months I've been on the sidelines.

I've fallen off the wagon a bit with my walking, but I got back on track with a 45 minute walk this morning. It felt good to be walking again with some of my aches and pains healed up.

Yesterday was a rough day for me. For some reason I woke up with a nasty pain in my back and my left arm. Don't know if I slept on my side wrong or what, but I was feeling pretty crappy. Spent some time on the heating pad and by mid-afternoon the pain was pretty much gone. Since I can't take aspirin or ibuprofen any more, I've had to find new and creative ways to deal with aches and pains. Tylenol has never been an effective pain reliever for me, so I can't really count on that for much. After the pain was gone, I was feeling pretty tired so I spent the rest of the day horizontal on the couch watching college football.

Deb made up a dinner for a friend of ours from the lake who had surgery this week. We delivered it to Charlie and his wife at around dinner time. Charlie looks like he is doing pretty well, though he and I both recognize that feel of being "lost" during our recovery. We were his third group of visitors for the day, so we didn't stay long, but we are glad to see him doing well.

I wanted to do some Christmas decorating and maybe even get the monster Christmas tree up in the great room this weekend because the weather was so nice. However, didn't turn out to be a good idea, so I'll have to do it later when I'm feeling up to it a bit more.

I did get out for one event this weekend. Deb and I and Matt and Theresa P. had planned to attend a meat raffle at the Stacy Bar the week I started back to work, so we lived up to our plan this week. We were joined by our friend John E. and we all had a good time. Matt and Theresa won three times, and Deb and I won twice. Before we left, Gene H. from work stopped by and we found out he lives near Stacy, so we consider him one of our neighbors as well. We plan to all get together and do this again soon. On the way home, we stopped at Dave's and Barb's house to say hi and visit for a short time. After that it was home, some supper, and then to bed.

Looking forward to the short work week ahead and then Thanksgiving. We are having our Thanksgiving with our daughters and their families on Saturday. Looking forward to the full house, playing with grandsons, and the good food everyone is bringing!

Working to return to full speed.

Jon