The biggest thing is don't be surprised when you are exhausted. I never figured out exactly why but every time I went back after disability leave/hospitalization I was exhausted. My pdoc actually usually sends people back for half a week the first week and ideally has people work 3 days for the first 2 weeks.

Having someone spread a white lie made a big difference the time that happened. I did have the experience of going back once to find The Assistant from Hell (truly the name I think of her by and I could come up with worse if I swore when I wasn't manic) had told everyone that I was psychotic and IP the whole 4 weeks I was off. In reality I had a bad reaction to an ANTI-psychotic and spent a NIGHT in the ER. It took a bit to figure out why people were being weird and why this woman told me this long story about her son having a psychotic reaction to an antibiotic that put him IP. I was like HUH? Why are you telling me these weird things all day until I pinned down a social worker and got the truth out of her. I complained heavily to my company and The Assistant from Hell got a demotion with this being a big part of why. They should have fired her since from then on (I learned this 2 years later) the director of nursing would say something in a meeting I wasn't at about a decision I'd made, The Assistant from Hell would say "It's not my fault, Jen's in charge but I think she's wrong" and the DON would say "what does she know, she's crazy" and move on, making lists of all my "failures". Until the Assistant from Hell I was liked and respected there.

But don't think that will happen to you. It truly takes a horrible person to do that and she wound up with so many ethical issues that I had to start treating one patient myself because the patient wasn't getting treatment otherwise and then the local manager and I were sent out to lunch to make a list of issues with The Assistant from Hell. We actually had to edit to because at first it was 2 pages long and we thought that seemed picky even though it was our main issues. She got in quite a bit of trouble, walked out and was fired. What she did to me was a big part of that. I in turn got a big raise that I think was a thank you for not suing them. I was happy to take a bribe.