Morning lovely friends. I’m 12 months on from my ischaemic stroke. Back at work , and doing ok but obviously fatigue remains a killer. Currently , if I go out for an evening meal with a couple of friends ( by that I mean 6pm) it takes two days to recover. How long did it take you to be able to book evening events again knowing you’d be able to do it without consequences? Thanks in advance. Asking because I’m sad to keep declining evening invites when I know I can’t do it.
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Hi Jeanette - I am sorry that you are having to decline evening invites and it is very sad. As you may know I am not in a position to advise you on this one, but if it is any consolation, at least you are getting invites and have friends and family that care. 
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I’m finding I can pack more into my day than I could a year or two post stroke.
I’m nearly 5yrs post stroke now and find I can manage quite well to go out for an evening event now. It takes a couple of extremely busy days for me to crash at some point later in the week.
For example, Saturday I took my daughter to her pottery class. Did a bit of shopping then came home to eat before going over to Liverpool to a very lively book signing event. This was about an hour and a half’s drive away, though my hubby drove. But we didn’t get home ‘til 11:30pm. But I still managed to get up next day, after a bit of a lie in, and did my full grocery shop, that I couldn’t do on Saturday.
So this week, I’m back to one event a day. I’ve still managed to walk there and back to my strength & balance class today, which takes about 20 minutes one way.
Tuesday will be an early start as I have my Aphasia group at 10am which is a half hours drive away. And Wednesday is a Body Balance class; Thursday/Friday the gym. So on those days I tend not to plan for anything more eventful than say a check up at the dentist or doctors. If I do have a major event coming up on those days, I will miss the physical activity so I don’t get overly fatigued. Because then I would probably crash next day and not be good for much else.
It’s all about how you plan ahead to manage your stroke fatigue so you don’t have these crashes for days after, they are a bugger!
I class anything away from home as an event, because of the time it takes to get there and back, the levels physical effort to be made, levels of concentration required, the whole thought process and conversation that has to be made, and the levels of noise around you. All of which the brain has to take in and process, understand and churn out.
But at 12 months post stroke I still wasn’t capable of planning ahead or thinking muchat all for myself, I was still relying heavily on my family to keep track of things for me and reminding me daily sometimes several times a day, of what I should be doing; heck, I wasn’t even driving back then 
Going out for a meal with friends would have been a rare and major event that would have floored me for days later.
So you sound as though you’re doing better than I was. But then again, that’s all to do with where in our brain our strokes have impacted us. No two are the same are they?!
But it can all improve further in the next 6 months. 18 months after my stroke I was even driving again. That was when cognition suddenly switched on again like the flip of a light switch 
You just have to be patient and keep up the good work of your physio, and have faith in your brain, it’ll come 
Lorraine
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@Seddso I still struggle with this and I am almost four years on from my stroke. I work part time now and have every Wednesday off. My friends have got used to this and we now tend to arrange our evening’s out for a Wednesday evening as I have the opportunity to rest more during the day. This helps manage my fatigue much better. I do find the location of the event though can play a part in the fatigue levels as if it is too noisy it usually wipes me out for days afterwards. You’ll probably find in time that it will get easier but there may be occasions where you just have to decline the invite.
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I still get fatigue 11 years later. It needs to be managed rather than cured. I’m a big advocate of the power nap. Just 15 minutes of sleep before going out helps keep me awake all evening.
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@Seddso I just don’t do evening events as I cannot recover from them. I am a breakfast or a lunch girl and have lost out on many a night out because of that. but I don’t care as it means they were never friends in the first place. Good luck for the future. I put my health first 
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Hello Jeanette,
I’m wondering this too, as at the moment, I feel like I did in March fatigue wise. It’s disheartening, isn’t it?
One idea might be to have a ‘virtual night out’ where you can get together, share food and conversation over Google Meet or something like that?
Could friends bring food round to you like a ‘pot luck’ as the Americans call it? 
That way you don’t have to travel, which will save you some energy.
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That’s a great idea about a virtual meal. We did that sort of thing during the lockdowns and more recently with my brother going through cancer treatment 
Think we used Zoom but have also used WhatsApp, which is also good for 1 to 1 chats with mates.
Lorraine
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