Work want me back full time at four months and I "look fine". How do I explain the wall I hit at two in the afternoon?

#1davew1966(Joined Oct 2025 · 21 posts)June 12, 2026, 9:16 pm

Right, different question from my usual arm moaning.

Four months post stroke. Arm is coming along, walking is fine, and I have had a very friendly email from HR about "planning your return". Friendly in the way that means they'd like a date. My job is site supervision, so half office half walking round a yard, nothing heavy but a lot of people asking me things at once.

Here is my problem. I look completely normal. I walked into the office to sign something last week and three people told me how well I looked and one said I must be bored at home. And I AM bored at home. But by two o'clock most days I'm done, properly done, like someone unplugged me, and I've got nothing left to give until the next morning.

How do I explain that to an employer without it sounding like I'm swinging the lead? Because "I get tired" is what everyone says and it does not remotely cover it.

#2Gareth VossAdmin(Joined Sep 2024 · 187 posts)June 13, 2026, 9:38 am

Dave, this was the hardest fortnight of my entire recovery and it wasn't anything physical, so you have my full attention.

I was 44 and running a working life when mine happened, and the thing that caught me out is exactly what you've described: I could walk into a building months before I could survive a working day inside it. The physical recovery is the visible one, so it gets the credit and the sympathy. Nobody sees the two o'clock wall, and worse, the version of you they met in the corridor for ten minutes becomes the version they plan around.

Two things that actually helped me. First, stop using the word tired. It maps onto everyone else's experience of a bad night's sleep and it will be heard as an excuse. What worked for me was describing it in units they could schedule: "I have about four good hours a day at the moment and they are the morning ones." That is a resourcing statement, not a complaint, and managers can work with it.

Second, go back slower than you want to. Everyone I have watched do this well went back on fewer hours than felt dignified and stayed back. The ones who went in at full whack to prove they were fine crashed at about week five, and getting a second phased return agreed after a failed first one is far harder than asking for a modest one now. I've set out the whole shape of it in returning to work after a stroke, including what a phased return usually contains.

One caution: what your particular head and body can take at four months is something your rehabilitation team can assess and I cannot. Take the hours question to them before you agree a date with HR, not after.

#3keithb57(Joined Oct 2024 · 51 posts)June 13, 2026, 6:02 pm

"I have four good hours and they're the morning ones." Stealing that.

What sank me on my first go back was the meetings, not the work. I could do the actual job. What I couldn't do was sit in a room with five people talking over each other and hold the thread. Came out of an hour of that with nothing left for the rest of the day.

Ask for the minutes in writing and get the big meetings moved to mornings. Sounds like nothing. It's most of the battle.

#4mattw_tbi(Joined Jun 2025 · 17 posts)June 14, 2026, 11:47 am

Same here and mine was a head injury, so it's not just a stroke thing.

Noise is the one nobody plans for. An open plan office at 3pm cost me more than the actual tasks did. Headphones and a corner desk bought me about ninety minutes a day, which at that stage was the difference between coping and not.

Also, and I'll be blunt, at four months I would not be agreeing to full time. I did, because I was proud and skint, and it cost me most of the following year.

#5Geoffswife(Joined Jan 2025 · 38 posts)June 16, 2026, 8:24 am

From the other chair. Geoff went back at five months on reduced hours and I want to name a thing that surprised us both, because Dave, you might get this and think something has gone wrong.

He got very low about six weeks in. Not from the work being too hard. From doing a smaller version of his own job in front of people who remembered the old one. He said it was like being a guest in his own life. Nobody had warned either of us that going back could be a grief as well as a relief, and we both thought he was relapsing.

It passed. But expect it, and don't read it as a sign the return was a mistake.

#6davew1966(Joined Oct 2025 · 21 posts)June 16, 2026, 8:09 pm

Geoffswife said:

like being a guest in his own life

That line has done something to me and I'm not sure I want to look at it too closely yet.

Right. Plan: physio and the rehab nurse first, then HR with a proposal rather than waiting for theirs. Mornings only to start. Meetings in writing. I'll report back.

#7davew1966(Joined Oct 2025 · 21 posts)August 25, 2026, 7:55 pm

Ten weeks on, as promised, and it's a mixed report.

The good: went back three mornings a week, not full time. Took the "four good hours" line almost word for word and my manager was fine about it, which I did not expect. Meetings are mornings now and I get a written summary. Building up to four mornings in September.

The not so good: I overdid it in week four because it was going well, did two full days back to back, and then lost most of the following week. So the wall is still there, it just moved. And Geoff's wife was right about the mood thing. I found the first fortnight harder than the stroke ward, which sounds ridiculous written down.

No neat ending. But I'm working, and I wasn't in May.