DR MAX PEMBERTON: Believe me, Kate must NOT rush back after this surgery

Poor Kate. Yes, in many ways she has a gilded life. She lives in palaces, surrounded by priceless art and has servants and assistants. She is beautiful, elegant and has money. The great and the good fall at her feet.

But health is a great equalizer. If you’re sick, it doesn’t really matter. Although the palace has assured people that her abdominal surgery was a benign condition, a two-week stay, even in a private hospital, is unusual. So it is not presumptuous to assume that it is something very serious.

That’s extremely stressful for anyone, let alone a mother of three small children. How terrible to have to experience this.

The Palace has said she will take time off from her official duties until Easter and in that regard I think she is incredibly sensible.

We don’t know what’s going on or why she needed the surgery, but Kate always strikes me as very level-headed, level-headed and stoic, so I’m sure she wouldn’t have taken medical advice and would have taken it to heart taken. lots of free time unless absolutely necessary.

Abdominal surgery is serious. Of course, there’s always someone who will tell you how they had a hysterectomy during their lunch break, or how they had their appendix removed while they were at school. But in reality, we should all take a leaf out of Kate’s book and recover properly.

I too recently had abdominal surgery – like Kate, in a private hospital – and looking back, I wish I had appreciated how major my operation was and taken the time it took to recover.

Mine was for a hernia, which is not life-threatening – it’s where part of the intestine protrudes through a weak spot in the abdominal muscles into the groin – although the surgeon was concerned it could become trapped (where the intestine loses blood supply ). and dies).

I had keyhole surgery, which I mistakenly thought would be a minor process. I worked in surgery and really should have known better. My surgeon tried to explain that it simply meant the scars would be minor, but the surgery itself was still serious even though I was only in the hospital for a day or so. Ha! How I ignored his warnings.

Coincidentally, two of my neighbors had similar operations. I came across one just a week after he was fired and he was jogging. How serious can it really be? I asked myself. The next day I get to work.

I was mistaken. The surgery involved dissecting the muscles from my belly button down to my groin, retracting the wayward intestine, and sewing a mesh into place to close the holes.

I was so confident that I would be fit after the operation that I met up with friends for lunch the next day and told work I would make a few phone calls and only need a few days off before returning in person would be.

The moment I woke up from the anesthesia, I realized this had been a mistake.

Although some have the surgery as a day procedure, everyone is different. Complications landed me in hospital for two days and unfortunately I developed urinary retention (which meant I couldn’t urinate) and it took six weeks for my bladder to return to normal.

But what I didn’t realize was that the pain, discomfort and tenderness left me barely able to walk for a week. And when I did, the discomfort was so great that I couldn’t walk upright.

For three weeks I had to wear loose tracksuits. I usually wear dress pants to work, which would have been too uncomfortable. Just the thought makes me shudder, let alone the fact that without my usual uniform – my armor, which gives us the courage to face the world – I felt in the background.

Heaven help me if I was as regal as Kate, whose outfit is under scrutiny!

At the surgeon’s insistence, I had to call work and explain that I would in fact have to take a few weeks off – and he banned me from the gym for six months. Six months! He made me promise to rest at home for three full weeks, which I dutifully did, and when I went back to work I was surprised at how tired and weak I felt.

Interestingly enough, shortly after, I ran into the neighbor who was so excited when I met him while jogging right after his surgery. He looked sheepish. He burst his stitches and had to go back to the hospital shortly after I saw him.

It seems we have lost the art of recovery – of taking time to let our bodies heal. Skipping this part of the disease does no one any good.

It often makes us feel unwell for longer and increases the risk of complications. It doesn’t help our minds either. We need to give ourselves time to get back up to speed both physically and mentally. Many of us are guilty of returning to work too quickly.

We carry on and work in the belief that we just have to keep going. I think this is in large part because in our hectic, fast-paced modern lives we refuse to believe that recovering from an illness takes as long as it actually does. We tell ourselves: just a few more days and that should be it.

Getting better was once part of being sick. Now it is simply assumed that wishful thinking and clenched teeth will prove you right. People are genuinely perplexed if it takes longer.

I hope Kate recovers quickly, but I also hope she doesn’t return to work until she’s good and ready.

The scars of abuse remain forever

The horror stories of the Rochdale grooming gang continue to shock and horrify. A new report last week highlighted the horrific events and plight of the young girls who were raped and abused, as well as the harassment they faced while giving evidence against their abusers.

There were stories of a girl kept in a cage and made to behave like a dog, a 15-year-old girl raped and then murdered with a heroin overdose, and an aborted fetus kept in a freezer. The report also identified 96 men who are still considered a potential risk to children and raised concerns that grooming is still “categorically” taking place in the city.

I have worked with so many victims of abuse over the years, including many who were raped or abused as children. The legacy of this spreads well into adulthood, causing a domino effect of PTSD, substance abuse, depression and even suicide. It’s unbelievable that we don’t have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior. Yet people are prosecuted for not paying their TV license or throwing waste in the wrong bin. We have our priorities all wrong.

The British Medical Association (BMA) has been widely condemned for a letter calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The letter to Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron claimed that the ‘Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to an inexcusable shortage of basic needs’.

To me, this sums up what is wrong with the BMA and why so many doctors feel angry and frustrated by it. The events in Gaza are undoubtedly terrible. But apart from alienating the Jewish members, it has nothing to do with the BMA, which exists solely to stand up for members’ rights and working conditions.

Dr. Max writes for…

Three minutes of yoga

Many of us dream of being able to spend our mornings doing yoga, but don’t have the time. Yet new research shows that just three minutes of yoga per hour at work can reduce the risk of diabetes by 25 percent. The little-and-often approach is easier to achieve and still has great benefits, especially if you have a desk-based job.