Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell will return to work Monday at the U.S. Capitol, nearly six weeks after a fall in a hotel near Washington and lengthy treatment for a concussion.

The 81-year-old Kentucky senator has been recovering at home since being released from a rehabilitation center on March 25. He fell after attending an event earlier that month, injuring his head and breaking a rib.

He visited his office on Friday, the first time since his injury, and is expected to have a packed Senate schedule this week.

Looking forward to returning to the Senate on Monday, McConnell tweeted Thursday. We have important business to do and great battles to win for Kentuckians and the American people.

McConnell returns to the Senate ahead of a busy process that will see Congress include a way to raise the country’s debt ceiling and negotiate additional aid for the war in Ukraine. And he’s coming back as several other senators have been knocked out for medical reasons, raising questions about how much the Senate will be able to achieve in the coming months with a 51-49 split between the parties.

The absence of the GOP leader, along with those of Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and John Fetterman, among others, have already contributed to the Senate’s sluggish pace in the first few months of the year.

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Unlike the past two years, when Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (DN.Y.) was able to push key elements of President Biden’s agenda with the help of a Democratic-led House, the senate has been significantly delayed by the republicans. now the boss in the house. And absences have made even simple votes, such as those on nominations, more difficult.

An immediate question for McConnell upon his return is whether he should help Democrats temporarily replace Feinstein on the Senate Judiciary Committee while she continues to recover from a case of shingles in California. Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated as the Democrat’s absence from the panel of more than six weeks has delayed the confirmation of some of Biden’s nominees, and Feinstein has asked for a short-term replacement on the committee.

Democrats can’t do that without help from Republicans, though, as approval of the process would require 60 votes on the Senate floor. Republicans are so far silent on whether they will object.

It’s unclear when Feinstein, 89, will return to Washington. Her office has so far declined to say.

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Fetterman also returns to the Senate on Monday, who was hospitalized in February for clinical depression. He was treated at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for six weeks and his doctors say his depression is now in remission.

Fetterman’s announcement that he was checking into the hospital earlier this year came after he suffered a stroke last year and struggled with an auditory processing disorder, which can leave someone unable to speak fluently and quickly lose meaning in spoken conversation. process. The Pennsylvania Democrat, 53, now uses devices in conversations, meetings and congressional hearings that transcribe spoken words in real time.

In a statement when he was released from Walter Reed late last month, Fetterman said the care he received there changed my life.”

I’m excited to be the father and husband I want to be, and the Pennsylvania senator deserves it, said Fetterman, who drew praise for his decision to get treatment.

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When McConnell visited his office at the Capitol on Friday, video captured by NBC News showed him walking into the building unassisted while aides remained close by.

This was McConnell’s second major injury in recent years. Four years ago, he tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, sustaining a fractured shoulder that required surgery. The Senate had just begun a summer recess, and he worked from home for a few weeks while he recovered.

McConnell had polio in his early childhood, and he has long acknowledged that he had difficulty climbing stairs as an adult.