A Small Victory For Me

I haven’t been at work for 20 full hours per week since September of 2006. That was the month when I found out that I had a perforated bowel and needed emergency surgery. It was then that I had a colostomy bag attached to my stomach and had to wear it until March 2007.

I’m not going to lie…it’s one of the worst things one can imagine. The fact that my stomach wound had opened up didn’t help either. The fact that I had a gaping hole in my stomach so close to the colostomy pouch definitely put me at risk of getting an infection. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

After having the colostomy reversed in March 2007, I obviously took some time to recover. I had to go back to the hospital for a couple of days after that surgery. At first it was thought that the doctors might need to open my stomach up again as it was thought that things weren’t attached properly. Thankfully, things sorted themself out and I didn’t need to be cut open again.

A while after, I decided that I wanted to come back to work. I missed working. I missed getting out of the house for things other than going to the hospital. I missed my friends at work. I went back to work and everyone was amazingly supportive. This is one of the reasons I love my job so much. Everyone is caring, understanding, and accomodating.

Since I am a part-time employee, my regular schedule would be 20 hours a week. For a while, I did just 3 hours a week, then 5, then one day of 3 and another day of 5, etc. I’ve worked my way up to three 5 hour shifts. Prior to my surgery, my schedule was two 7.5 hour shifts and one 5 hour shift. I’ve been a bit hesitant to just jump right back into my job as I don’t want to risk fatigue or anything like that. I suspect that my anxiousness to get back to work in previous instances when I was off had ultimately caused me more grief that good.

I’ve been doing 15 hours a week for a while now. I decided that this Wednesday would be my first full 7.5 hour shift for 2 years. I look forward to seeing how I cope with this. I think it’s important to start testing the waters now as I’ll have to gather up some strength from somewhere when it’s time for me to cope with both work and school in January. I’m really looking forward to starting my program. It’s a full time program. I hope I haven’t taken on too much.

I’ll need to make contact with my disability co-ordinator from GBC tomorrow. I’d like to write my placement test on Friday I think. I have work on Tuesday and Wednesday, and a hair appointment on Thursday. I plan to just relax tomorrow and perhaps do some homework.

So, that’s my small victory. Actually…it isn’t that small. It’s quite huge. Huge for me, anyways.