A Journey of a 1000 miles starts with a single step

Recovery - work assistanace

The Journey

Recovery

Fund Raising

Running

Headway UK

Headway Swindon

Further Reading /
Inspirational books

Touching the Void

It's not about the Bike

The Lore of Running

One of the most important factors in ensuring my recovery has been relatively problem free is that Intergraph have been very understanding and supportive of my need to return to work gradually

There has certainly been no pressure to go back to work more quickly than I was able to. In fact if anything the impetus to get back to work all came from me,
Intergraph had advice from an Occupational Therapist from their insurance company who put in place a phased return to work starting after I had the ability to leave work if I became too tired. i.e. when I got my driving licence back after 6 months.
The phased return to work started with doing 2 half days then onto 3, I soon realised that driving to 40 miles to and from work for a half day was probably counter productive so I suggested making them full days to give me a longer period to settle into doing a work task before having to leave.
I actually started going into work for a day a week from around April.
I chose to do this because I thought it was important that my collegues at work could see that physically I was OK, as all they knew was that I'd had a 200' fall which I imagine conjoured up all sorts of images of what state I could be in.
As it happens several people from work did come to see me in hospital in Swindon, although I only know this now because people have told me they came in, I have no memory of any visits.

In 2006, 3 years after the accident I am still not able to work a full week, I take Wednesdays as my rest day. I work 2 days, rest for a day, then work the next 2. This seems to work quite well at the moment.

2008, I finally started back working a full 5 day week in October 2007. After attempting this before and failing we took a more gradual approach of working initially 5 days but only 30 hours. 4 working days over 5, and then gradually increased the hours per day to 7.5. In fact this week (March 2008) I have even been able to work longer than 7.5 hours on a few days, but it is only a 4 day week with Easter Moday a bank holiday.