One of the last things Lisa Hammond remembers about being prepped for a rotator-cuff procedure last year was the medical personnel prying a BlackBerry out of her hands.

Hammond, the chief executive of Femail Creations, a Las Vegas-based shopping-catalog company, was on a deadline: She had a date to repair her torn shoulder, but she needed to email approvals for her firm's latest catalog. Hammond  says she managed to do both as she was being wheeled on a gurney into the operating room.

Getting a high-powered executive to stop working, even after major surgery, is a challenge surgeons say they frequently face. According to doctors, hard-driving corporate types can be both the best and worst surgical patients. On the one hand, they are extra motivated to heal quickly so they can return to work and get back to an active lifestyle. But they are also prone to ignoring doctors' orders about when they should return to work or how long they should spend in physical therapy.

"It's a plus and a minus," says Anthony Frempong-Boadu, a neurosurgeon at New York University Medical Center. "You're happy these type-A-plus guys are motivated, but you can't get them to lie still. They'll ask you, ‘Can I fly to China next week.' And God forbid it's bonus season."

Job pressures and workplace competition may drive some executives to return to work earlier than they should. Others have difficulty adjusting to the loss of control while being laid up.

"Big-city executive types are used to looking at a situation, making a plan of action, and seeing the result come about instantaneously," says Bradley Weiner, an orthopedic surgeon in Orange County, New York. "It's always hard for that person to be on the patient side. No one rises to the level of C.E.O. by being laid-back."

Frempong-Boadu finds that corporate executives often try to coordinate their surgery to coincide with slow work cycles.

He recalls one patient who converted his hospital room into an office just hours after having cervical spine surgery. The room was buzzing with the sounds of a portable fax machine, and the patient was propped up with a laptop, BlackBerry, and Edge Wireless PC cards to insure broadband access. The patient's executive assistant (who was "dressed to the nines") sat by his bedside as he issued orders in his hospital gown.

Recovery time from back and neck surgery can vary widely, but Frempong-Boadu recommends that patients don't return to the office for two to four weeks. That advice is rarely heeded.

Joe Hurta, 34, a former patient of Frempong-Boadu's, had back surgery on May 31, 2006, and went back to work in two weeks instead of the recommended four. As the National Football League's player-personnel coordinator, Hurta, a former Marine and triathlete, thought that June (the league's slowest month) would be the ideal time for recuperation. But he says he quickly became "bored out of his skull" with only the World Cup soccer tournament to occupy his time.

"I did try to get back as quickly as possible," Hurta admits. "I may have rushed going back to work-in fact, I know I did. I probably should have waited another week or so."

At home, he began checking his email and returning urgent calls. Once back at the office, he found it difficult to sit at his desk for long periods, and he felt pain if he turned the wrong way.

When an executive has surgery, it can't always be scheduled in advance. Lisa Hammond was dancing with her husband at his surprise 40th birthday party at a nightclub in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, when he stumbled and knocked her to the ground. After her rotator-cuff surgery, she was told not to work for at least a week. That first night, heavily medicated and with her arm in a sling, she tried unsuccessfully to type an article with one hand. (Frustrated, she called her publicist to complete the job.) Within 24 hours she was back in her Las Vegas office, wearing the sling and with an intravenous pump dangling from her arm. "My staff suggested I return home," she says. She was back at work for good within four or five days.

Advances in technology have certainly made it easier for these overachievers to continue working from their bedrooms while recovering from surgery. That may not always be a good thing, as Allan Whitescarver, recently learned after undergoing surgery to remove a torn medial meniscus incurred while fly-fishing. Whitescarver, the chief communications officer for San Francisco law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, felt free of pain in the hours after his surgery, thanks to the afterglow of general anesthesia. Feeling voluble, he sent an email to one of the corporate law partners. "My thoughts were a little disorganized and somewhat loopy," says Whitescarver, who declined to reveal the exact content of the email. "It was uncharacteristically introspective, rambling, and abstract. More like a stream of consciousness."

Sometimes surgeons find out that an executive has returned to work too soon from a concerned spouse. "Spouses can be the biggest rats," says Frempong-Boadu. "They'll call and say, ‘My husband went back to work on day four, not on day 10.' "

The worst thing to do, according to Bradley Weiner, is to forgo physical therapy. Weiner says that he has been told by several executives that they are too busy for rehab.

Hammond, 40,  says that after surgery, physical therapy felt like a "part-time job," with two hours scheduled every day for eight weeks. The therapy sometimes extended her workday to 11 p.m. "I was told, ‘If you want mobility back in your arm, you'll go to physical therapy,' " she says.

Frempong-Boadu says those who are the most recalcitrant about physical therapy can reappear at the office feeling pain-ridden. Generally, these patients take far longer to heal. "We have a conversation about therapy and about lifestyle changes," he says. "We set up an environment to heal, but the patients have to make it possible."