Need some advice about how much to tell my team about recent/ongoing illness

[rookiemater]

Due to severe period pains and interim bleeding last Wednesday I had a laparoscopy to drain a cyst and ascertain my condition. Unfortunately they found severe endometriosis and weren't able to treat all of it because it may be in the bowel and the vagina. I have started monthly injections of Zoladex which gives a false menopause along with HRT to counteract some of the side effects. I will be getting this for 4 months and this will hopefully calm down the endometriosis and give us a shot at TTC as prior to this we had been trying for over a year but consultant said that extent of Endo was probably the cause of me not getting pregnant.

I manage a small team of blokes and naturally they were concerned when I said I had to go to hospital for an op. As I thought before going in that it would all be sorted out I just said it was in connection with womens problems and left it at that, and they were glad not to discuss it further !

My dilemma is now should I say anything further to them about my condition. I have notified my boss as there could be some side effects due to the injections and I feel its important that he knows. At the least I am likely to have hot flushes and am already a bit scattier than normal, but could also be snappy and/or depressed and have mega headaches..

My question is how much if any of this do I share with my team ? Clearly I'm not going to mention anything about TTC, but if people ask if I'm ok now I don't think I can turn round and say "Yes I'm fine" because I'm not, but my natural inclination isn't to share too much information.

I would mention it if it arises. Say, 'Yes, I am sorry, I am not feeling great, it's a side effetc of the meds I'm on, take no notice'

You don't have to go into any more detail if you don't want to.

Thanks, but what if they ask about the surgery. It would be a pretty normal thing to ask if I got on ok, and I don't want to go into gory detail, but I just don't feel I can say that I am well now, because it isn't true.

At the end of the day you should only say what you feel comfotable saying, if you feel you need to sort of pre warn them them personally I would do this the next time you have them together and have a few things to discuss. Have it as the first item and being blokes will pretty much ahve dropped from their radar by the end of the meeting. It depends on how you get along with your team, I would probably say something along the lines of "thankf ro your concern about my recent surgery, just to make you aware that I may feel a bit unwell at times but hopfully nothing as bad as man flu!"