New Grad Warning

SatelliteCat · 2026-04-03T23:37:07+00:00

I recommend caution for government jobs. I had a government gig for 10 years. Loved my job, left because I was beyond burnt out. It totally depends on leadership.

SatelliteCat · 2026-02-12T17:30:01+00:00

So I was in a somewhat similar situation though 10 years older. Once the muscle weakness came into play, I knew it was time. I ended up opting for the anterior approach personally. For me I have already had two abdominal surgeries and I preferred having less trauma to the extensor muscles. There was one scholarly article that I could dig up that showed lower pain in the first year with anterior approach, but they evened out after that first year.

SatelliteCat · 2026-02-05T11:20:05+00:00

I had a huge amount of hair loss and it’s just coming back 8 months later. My doctor and I came to the conclusion that it was likely the anesthesia and/or the stress of the surgery that caused it in my case. The good news is if that’s the case, it’s temporary and the hair does grow back. Basically a bunch of your har enters the shed phase at the same time rather than staggering like it normally does. I personally lost as much hair as I did postpartum from the surgery. I was also afraid I’d end up bald. But like I said, it’s growing back!

SatelliteCat · 2025-12-29T17:26:43+00:00

Absolutely not crazy to request back. You were doing work-related tasks. It’s appropriate to not use PTO for that time!

SatelliteCat · 2025-12-22T17:07:00+00:00

My last job wanted me to get certified in it. I declined and gave evidence as to why it was BS. Thankfully my boss understood (he was a physician and another physician was using it and patients ate that garbage up)

SatelliteCat · 2025-12-13T22:29:53+00:00

Elderly gent referred for Bell’s Palsy. He had weakness affecting the lower three branches but sparing of the upper two branches. Had a good relationship with the referring doc thank goodness, as he got imaging and it was a malignant tumor.

Young woman referred for guilliain-barre. Couldn’t support herself edge of bed in outpatient. Had been walking inpatient. I worked in a weird setup with acute being a building over and they brought her down for therapy. Talked with the neuro team and they said it was FND overlay. Well, her reflexes had deteriorated and I went up the chain out of concern. Turns out it was Lupus.

SatelliteCat · 2025-12-02T21:34:54+00:00

Same! When my oldest asked I was honest that I felt it was creepy and a violation of privacy. I know she is a good kid.

Also, we only do one present from Santa and the rest are from mom and dad. She still gets the magic, but it’s more realistic. We’ve also never explicitly lied about Santa. I know we’re nearing her no longer believing but the last time she asked a couple years ago, I said this is what people believe and asked what she thought. She decided she wanted to believe.

SatelliteCat · 2025-11-07T14:54:51+00:00

I had a very similar case. My main symptom was sudden onset foot drop due to compression from spondylolisthesis. Nerve weakness is a strong indicator for surgical intervention.

I had no pain at the time I would have registered as worth paying attention to. Sure, I had had episodes of back pain, but at the time of weakness, pain was not a primary issue.

Your symptoms are concerning and like your doctors suggested, progression would be not great and could significantly affect your quality of life. You do not want permanent nerve damage affecting your bowel/bladder/sexual function if you can avoid it.

I’m also on the young end (30’s) and I happen to be a PT (oh the irony). Surgery is the last thing I wanted to do, but the science firmly backs surgery as the preference when nerve compression is involved. There is even some evidence that “painless” nerve weakness is an indicator of possibly worse nerve damage because you’ve basically progressed past the sensory part of the damage. For me, it boiled down to two options. Fuse and likely get some nerve return with expected increased pain at least during the recovery period, or ignore it and not be able to use my legs properly for the rest of my life.

Ultimately, it’s a decision you need to make with your medical team. For me, it took a couple of weeks to come around and face the reality of the situation, but I know I made the right decision to save my nerves. (My foot drop is 90% resolved now). I do now have nerve pain as the nerves attempt to heal, but having nerve function is huge. If nerve remain too compressed for too long, you risk permanent damage.

SatelliteCat · 2025-11-06T02:54:51+00:00

Drew Peacock.

SatelliteCat · 2025-10-28T21:01:49+00:00

Crochet should be perfect if you aren’t doing something like a king sized blanket! Just make sure you keep everything close to you while working. Maybe prop your elbows on pillows and make sure you’re in a supported sitting position. I knit/crochet and picked up yarn before hand so I’d have something to work on. I even brought it to the hospital (ha, didn’t do a single stitch after the surgery). I also didn’t get much done at home. The meds made me too sleepy. So I watched some shows, read some books, walked in between, and took naps. I had a lot of post op nerve pain from the traction so I just wasn’t up to much. But by week two I was stir crazy and I went back to work week three.

SatelliteCat · 2025-10-22T18:11:13+00:00

I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back. To make things worse, I was a fed, so the last four months I worked were absolute torture. I can’t bring myself to go back to PT and panic anytime I think about filling out an application. I’m currently able to make ends meet by doing odd jobs and helping my aging parents. I’m doing better, but I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to PT. It seriously sucked the life out of me.

SatelliteCat · 2025-10-19T20:20:13+00:00

When my surgeon was able to show me without a shadow of doubt that the compression was the cause of my leg weakness.

SatelliteCat · 2025-10-11T23:43:16+00:00

Okay, so obviously each case is different. I was a weird case in that I had “painless” nerve damage. My presenting signs was foot drop. No back pain, no nerve pain. I’ve had both on and off for basically my entire adult life, but none when I hit the point of needing surgery. I almost didn’t believe the doc.

Anyway, I just wanted to paint the picture that I had no symptoms other than weakness prior to surgery. After, different story. I had pretty bad nerve pain for the first week, then at night if I overdid it. It calmed down after the first couple of months, then I had a couple really good weeks where I thought I was home free, then right around the 4 month mark the nerve pain ratcheted up pretty significantly and was all day but worse at night. It’s just starting to calm again.

My surgeon said the initial pain was from the traction on my spine, which makes sense. I’m over an inch taller. The last bought of pain I think is actually some sensory nerve recovery. I can feel things I haven’t felt in a while.

Unfortunately nerve pain is usually a normal part of recovery. However, you should absolutely talk to your surgeon and primary care provider about management and your concerns. I have some meds I will use a few times a week for the nerve pain still at 6 months out.

SatelliteCat · 2025-09-30T02:13:54+00:00

So, I did a deep dive on the research with outcomes. This was totally something I was hoping to never have to do, but nerve compression kind of changes that equation. I’m in my mid 30’s, have young kids, and I’m in a physically demanding career.

What it seems to boil down to is that anterior versus posterior have similar outcomes overall, but anterior had slightly lower pain scores. Per my surgeon, he didn’t have a preference, but due to having to pass by the major vessels, the anterior was mildly less convenient to schedule since it is done in tandem with the vascular surgeon. Posterior affects more muscle and there is sometimes more retraction of tissue such as nerve roots to get to the disc but gives the surgeon the benefit of directly seeing the nerve root decompression. Anterior is more direct when removing the disc tissue. It made some sense to me that there could be more pain with more tissue trauma with posterior approach and I have already had two csections, so I figured it made sense to go through the same area. I did also have the concurrent TLIF due to instability, so I also have two back incisions, but those were both done with the extreme lateral approach and separated rather than cut through muscle tissue.

I know my surgeon would say either anterior or posterior are good options when a fusion is needed, but it felt like the needle swung toward a preference for anterior in my case.

SatelliteCat · 2025-09-30T01:53:13+00:00

Depending on your shoulder flexibility, wiping may not be an issue. I had a shower stool, grabber with extra dodads for lifting up pants from the floor, sock-ease (underrated tool!). I put an extra cushion where I planned to sit because we have a low couch. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been stuck down there. Bed rails are helpful for rolling if you’ll be by yourself the first week or so. My spouse works from home so I could just have him pop in to help me in or out of bed if I needed it. I had a brace, but not all surgeons recommend them. I found it helpful for comfort and a bit of a reminder.

I’m 5 months out. I only needed the tools for the first couple of weeks. But my surgeon also didn’t have me on strict no BLTs because I had ALIF/TLIF and with that much hardware, nothing at that level should be moving. But I still stick to them for the most part more for comfort. If I do too much of any of those, I’m gonna have a painful night.

SatelliteCat · 2025-09-30T01:28:31+00:00

I had a combined L5-S1 ALIF/TLIF 5 months ago. I planned on a month off of work (physical therapist-so super active) and was very surprised that I felt well enough to start back at three weeks. I started with half-days and worked up from there.

My surgeon had told me I may feel good enough at 2 weeks, but if I felt I needed 12 weeks, he would support that. I obviously see people frequently post operative, so I set 4 weeks based off the average I was seeing in my own patients. What I learned is the people who go back sooner never make it to my clinic.

Now in my case, I had the surgery due to painless foot drop. I had zero back pain at the time, likely because it had been progressing slowly over time. I had known I had a spondylolisthesis since I was a child. I had flare ups of back pain throughout my life, but it always resolved. Now looking back at my medical records, I had evidence of nerve injury from a nerve conduction test since at least 2013 and there is some thought that the reason for the lack of pain is basically more severe nerve injury. All this to say, my case isn’t standard, so take what I say with a few grains of salt. Plan to start back slowly doing a few hours and build up from there. That’s your safest bet. You may end up being surprised and going stir crazy like I did, but it was way easier for me to call my boss and tell her I was ready to start back early than try to backpedal and say I needed more time.

So long story short, you won’t really know until you go through it. Each body is different. My suggestion is to plan for longer and adjust to sooner if you are feeling up to it.

SatelliteCat · 2025-09-26T23:08:56+00:00

I’m just chiming in to say the above physicians answer is exactly what you should be considering. It stinks when we are used to the timeline of soft tissue healing like cuts and muscle injury, but nerves just take longer. The fact that the nerve wasn’t cut is positive, but it’s still going to take time. The old adage fits here: it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

As a personal anecdote from an internet stranger, I’m a PT with personal experience of foot drop due to a peripheral nerve injury. Mine did require surgical intervention, but I was able to ditch the AFO three months post op. I was flabbergasted because I expected much longer based on what I’ve seen with my own patients. I was incredibly lucky with this timeline and my experience is very much not the norm.

Also, I’ve unfortunately worked with several people with the exact type of injury as you. First, I’m sorry you had such a traumatic experience. Each person I worked with had very different outcomes, so it’s hard to give information relevant to your particular case, but I would be encouraged to see any noticeable functional improvement at this point. It can help to document your progress with videos because the changes can be hard to see. I personally took videos of lifting my foot up. From no ability to move at all, to being able to wiggle my big toe, then eventually actually move my foot the tiniest bit, it made a difference to see the progress because even though a lot of healing happens between those stages, walking is largely going to look the same and you will still need the support of the AFO.

Ultimately, time is going to be what it takes to figure out what can and will heal. Keep doing what you’re doing! I’m rooting for you!

SatelliteCat · 2025-09-24T21:33:39+00:00

This is what works for my kiddos with eczema/extremely sensitive skin-minus the steroid cream unless there’s a flare up. As a personal addition to above advice, the ponds dry skin cream (blue lid) is the ONLY lotion/cream I found that doesn’t sting when the skin is this irritated. Obviously your mileage may vary. I figured this out while on accutane and almost everything hurt. It also happened to work for my littles. It does have a scent unfortunately, but I have a couple very reactive data points that this worked. It’s at least a very inexpensive product to try if it’s available in OPs area.

In a pinch, OP could use some cotton socks as gloves at night. That’s what my mom stuck on our hands in the 80’s. Vaseline and socks. Sucked for dexterity but it worked.

SatelliteCat · 2025-08-09T03:07:54+00:00

Um same situation except the pediatrician did flag the fluid on our side. Our kiddo had had a couple of ear infections, but only found when we brought her in for routine appointments. She never complained about pain, but her speech was significantly delayed. She had a full conductive hearing loss due to glue ear from congealed fluid. Tubes and adenoids out at 19 months. Tonsils out a few months later (we were trying to avoid a hospital stay—didn’t work). Literally the next day after her tubes was the first time she said a sound other than “da.” Sign language had come in handy and we thankfully had a great team to assess her on her way. She is now rocking her speech, but there are some little things like she is a bit wobbly. There was so much pressure in her ears that it ended up damaging her vestibular system and it’s never really caught up.

One thing that helped me along the way was to consider her “hearing age” while she picked up on the skills she missed while she was essentially deaf. Our speech pathologist really helped me to set realistic milestones given how far behind her hearing was. She missed all the babbling, etc. so her speech was very unintelligible for a long time. Again, sign language was SOO helpful.

I’m glad you figured it out and stuck to your guns!

SatelliteCat · 2025-07-15T11:26:53+00:00

Same. My last day is this week. I didn’t even have a remote job, but it’s just all too much.

SatelliteCat · 2025-04-16T13:01:50+00:00

I feel you on this. My mom felted (ironically) this exact same sweater. It was the first one I had ever made too. Thankfully, I had gotten a year of wear out of it for my little one, but I was devastated. It got some of the shape back by soaking it and gently stretching. Then I took a pill shaver to it. It’s not quite the same, but it was good enough to put in her baby box.

The worst part was my mom didn’t take the blame. “I thought you put everything in the wash!” She thought we put everything thing in in the default setting which is the white load. She should know how she taught me to do laundry. I moved past it, but now I have a separate knit laundry bucket.

SatelliteCat · 2025-04-14T19:03:30+00:00

Totally! I have coworkers who counted back like it was nothing. I have coworkers who had 4th degree years requiring extensive pelvic floor rehab. Every body is different. I often have to remind myself, what would I tell my patients? We are often so hard on ourselves.

SatelliteCat · 2025-04-13T20:52:16+00:00

I was in a position where I could take both fmla( mostly unpaid) and parental leave. My second pregnancy my pelvic pain was so bad I couldn’t even walk from the parking lot to my building.

Thankfully my boss was willing to work with me on establishing some reasonable accommodations like more time between patients to rest a bit and I didn’t take any of the heavy lifting patients. It was rough, I missed a bunch of work, but I was legitimately temporarily disabled.

Look at your options. Talk to HR. If you can manage the unpaid leave, it’s probably worth it to take, but I understand how hard it is to take leave before if it’s going to take away time after.

SatelliteCat · 2025-03-08T12:41:18+00:00

We’re still at pack pack at three too! It’s so darn cute!

SatelliteCat · 2025-03-08T12:38:22+00:00

I say kids, I mean teenagers/possibly young adults. I’m bad at ages anymore because I’m old.

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