It Was a Compliment, Once My Ego Got Out of the Way

Fol­low­ing my most recent surgery, I was able to return to work much more quickly than I was able to fol­low­ing any of my pre­vi­ous surg­eries. This was true because of the nature of the sur­gi­cal work that was per­formed and because for me “work” con­sists of sit­ting on my butt and offer­ing advice and com­men­tary. If my “work” involved any­thing more phys­i­cal than lift­ing a small cup of cof­fee or slid­ing a pen across the sur­face of a piece of paper or typ­ing on a com­puter key­board, I would not have been able to sneak back into the office after so few days’ absence. This allowed me to keep notice of my surgery rel­a­tively private.

How­ever, as with any office set­ting, word tends to get around. Today I had quite a few vis­i­tors come by my office just to see how I was doing. Many expressed great sur­prise that I was back at work so soon. But I must admit that I was taken aback when two of the vis­i­tors com­mented that this was my forth surgery in eight years (I had not admit­ted it to myself, but they were almost right, it actu­ally is my forth in eight years and six months). My ini­tial reac­tion was very neg­a­tive. I did not want my health to be a topic asso­ci­ated with my work. I did not want there to be con­cern that I was not still gen­er­ally a capa­ble indi­vid­ual who had many years of sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion left. My ego was bruised that any­one would be ques­tion­ing that I could be so infirm.

But after a few min­utes, well maybe a few tens of min­utes, some degree of san­ity returned to my think­ing. These peo­ple were not ques­tion­ing whether I was still able to con­tribute. They were actu­ally glad to hear that I was doing well. They were actu­ally glad that I was going to be there to offer advice and com­men­tary. Even though it is often offered with a healthy (some might say unhealthy) dose of sar­casm and cyn­i­cism, the advice and com­men­tary is more often than not use­ful to these peo­ple and to others.

Now that I have my head turn back the way it should be, I real­ize all the peo­ple who have been com­ing by today are just com­ing by because they have heard that I had a health issue and they are glad I am OK. Amaz­ing but the frus­tra­tions of work seem much less than I remem­ber them. And also amaz­ing, but the dis­com­fort from the surgery is just not as bad as it was this morning.

Is Still Here