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Interviewer: You've just had surgery and you might be wondering, "When can I get back to my normal life?" Today on The Scope, we'll explore what to expect during recovery and how to safely return to the activities you join after your operation.

Today, I'm joined by Dr. Motaz Selim, a transplant surgeon at ÈËÆÞÖгöÊÓƵ of Utah ÈËÆÞÖгöÊÓƵ.

Now, Dr. Selim, let's just start with that question that I'm sure you get with your patients. When can a person get back to their normal life?

Understanding Recovery Expectations After Surgery

Dr. Selim: This is a loaded question because it's not a very easy thing to define what kind of life you are talking about. There are, obviously, stages for recovery, and getting back to normal daily activities is usually the first step for recovery from surgery. But going back to more intense workouts, and more intense activities, it can take a little longer.

So if we break it down into small pieces, when can somebody expect to go back to normal daily activities like driving and taking care of house chores and stuff like that? The answer is it depends on also what kind of surgery you're having and how healthy you are getting into that surgery.

So the first disclaimer is this is just a general overview of just vast majority of different kinds of surgeries and incisions. Definitely, talk to your surgeon also about what to expect.

But in a nutshell, if we're talking about a standard elective surgery, most people would expect to be kind of out of their normal for at least a week, plus or minus.

The fact that you're having surgery means that there are changes to your body that can cause some pain and discomfort. And also, there is a lot of your body to do after the surgery in terms of healing.

The First Days: Pain, Mobility, and Initial Healing

In the first few days after surgery, you'll have to expect some sort of discomfort or pain around the incision site. Pain medications help with that. We want the patients to feel comfortable, not just because nobody should be in severe pain, but also because we want to make sure that the patients are able to get up, move around, and do some basic activities because that helps a lot with the recovery after surgery.

The last thing you want after surgery is to have a complication because you're sitting in bed, not moving your legs, not taking deep breaths because of the pain, or anything else.

Interviewer: When you say activities after surgery, what are you meaning? Is it weight restrictions? Is it how vigorous? What kinds of things am I keeping on the lookout for when it comes to a standard elective procedure?

Dr. Selim: So just to set expectations, the first couple of days after surgery, we want to make sure that you're able to get out of bed, walk around the house, get to the bathroom, get up and down stairs, just the basic activities. However, you will have to avoid some more vigorous activities like exercise or weightlifting. The reason is your body is healing, and every part of your tissues heal at a different rate.

So even though the skin can look well-healed in a couple of days, the layers underneath the skin, the muscles, and the fasciae, which are the strong connective tissue that's holding the abdominal wall muscles together, take a lot longer to heal.

And if you are not very careful with how much tension you put on that healing process, instead of having a really strong, nice layer of healing around the deeper layer of your abdominal wall, that layer can get stretched and become thin and weak, which can eventually lead to something we call a hernia, which is basically a bulge or a protrusion around the incision site.

How Much Movement Is Safe After Surgery?

Interviewer: How much movement should a person be expecting to do after surgery? Is it a couple of weeks before they can go on a walk? Just timeline-wise.

Dr. Selim: So what I tell my patients is your body is usually smarter than all of us, so it's going to tell you what you need to know.

So in the first few days, the pain can be a little restrictive. Again, we have to hit that balance where the pain is controlled well enough. It's not going to go away completely, but at least it should be tolerable enough for anybody to be able to get up and move around the house.

If you're trying to do more than that in terms of maybe jogging or lifting weights, and you're starting to feel that pain around the incision, that's your body telling you to stop. So that's one of the first signs that you have to look for in the first few days.

After a few days, when the pain starts to kind of recede and it becomes no longer a major issue, this is where you need to be really careful, because your body is not necessarily going to stop you if you try to lift heavy weights or do some vigorous exercise.

At that particular moment, I advise my patients to go back to light forms of exercise, long walks, even light jogging, but to totally avoid any heavy weight lifting for at least six weeks. And by heavyweights, we're actually talking about just 10 pounds.

Anything that puts strain on the abdominal muscles around the incision is something that you should try to avoid so you can try to decrease the incidence of having some complications like a hernia in the future.

Managing Post-Surgery Activities

Interviewer: We've talked about physical activity, but what about just the day-to-day types of things that people have to do, like driving?

Dr. Selim: Driving is a very important part of our lives and everybody wants to go back to it, obviously, as soon as possible. The two considerations here are, number one, you want to make sure that you're sharp both mentally and physically so you can react appropriately in any kind of emergency so you don't hurt yourself or you don't hurt anybody else on the road.

So the first thing is making sure that you're not on too much pain medication, especially if you're on the kind of pain medication, opioids, or something, that can cloud judgment. If that's the case, then absolutely you cannot drive. You cannot operate heavy machinery or anything that needs attention and focus.

Luckily enough, most people, again, depending on what kind of surgery they are getting, are not going to be on those kinds of medications for more than a few days.

But even after you're done with taking that much pain medication, again, you have to listen to your body. Remember, in an emergency situation, you may have to react in a fraction of a second to just slam on those brakes. And if your incision is really low in your groin or very close to where moving your leg that fast or that forcefully can cause you pain and it's going to make you hesitate even for a fraction of a second, then you probably need to wait until that incision is a little less painful.

So you get to the point after a week or so when it's really up to the patient to decide if it's safe for them to drive or not.

Nutrition and Hydration After Surgery

Interviewer: What about other things that are important to our health like, say, nutrition or hydration? Is there anything that we should be keeping an eye on, in particular, after surgery?

Dr. Selim: So, again, with the healing of your body, you're building new tissues and this needs a lot of building blocks. This includes proteins, includes vitamins. So having good healthy nutrition after your surgery is very important. If you are not on any dietary restrictions, then you should be following a healthy balanced diet.

Pain Management: What to Expect and How to Identify Red Flags

Interviewer: So I also want to go back and revisit that idea of pain management. I know you're going to need some sort of pain management. What can a patient who has undergone surgery expect for aftercare for their pain management? And how can they tell if it's a normal level of pain or something more serious?

Dr. Selim: Having surgery means you're going to have pain, unfortunately. There's no way around that. But obviously, the whole idea is that there is risk versus benefit, and you're doing this because you are going to get better from some other symptoms. So that pain is temporary.

We like to use the scale of pain from 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you can ever imagine. And I think managing expectations is very important. We cannot guarantee to completely take the pain out. The only way to do that is to put somebody completely under anesthesia. And in the postoperative period, that's not something we want to do.

Again, we want to encourage early mobility to help avoid all the other complications that can happen after surgery from blood clots to infections in the lung and whatnot.

So trying to get to a pain level of around 3 is really what we should be looking for. That gives you the balance between being comfortable enough to get up and move around and not being in too much pain that's kind of disabling you or taking an emotional toll on you.

You, the patient, are the only one who can actually put a number on that scale to describe your pain. So it's a good practice to have some introspection and try to understand what's going on and find out where your sweet spot is.

The medical team is there to help you get there. Obviously, there are a lot of considerations when we're talking about prescribing pain medication. But there are so many different options and your medical team, surgical team will be very diligent about working with you to find that comfortable spot.

Overcoming the Fear of Surgery and Post-Surgery Recovery

Interviewer: So my last question is that surgery is kind of a scary thing for anyone, even from the smallest to the most severe type of surgery. But what kind of advice do you give people who are nervous about, say, the recovery that comes up afterward?

Dr. Selim: That is a great question. And what I tell my patients is you have to know what you're getting into, what happens if you do surgery, what happens if you don't do surgery.

You are your best advocate. You should be part of the decision-making if you should even go to surgery or not.

Anything we do has its inherent risk. It can be a little painful or dangerous, and even crossing the street or driving over the highway. But if you're doing this, knowing that the risks are not massive and you know you're doing this for a reason, then it's really all about the risk versus benefit.

We are always very upfront with our patients. Depending on, again, your type of surgery and where you're at before surgery, your surgeon should be able to give you an estimate about, "Is this more or less straightforward surgery? What are the risks of complication that can arise from this particular surgery or that surgery?"

And in the end, again, as long as you are convinced that you're doing this for a good reason for your health, for your well-being, and you have a good team around you that's listening to you and is happy to work with you towards your own self-fulfillment and improvement.