No, not in the sense of “making it work”, but rather, obtaining (and trying to maintain) gainful employment while dealing with a chronic illness. So much easier said than done, i assure you.
Strange as it may sound, the fact that i can hold down a (desk) job has been almost a source of invalidation for me. Surely the fact that i could somehow make it to work more often than not means that my fibro isn’t that bad, right? Follow that logic a bit further and that makes it that much more likely that it’s all in my head, right? Or just not nearly as bad as i think it is.
I totally call bullshit on that one. Oh, it’s not like i’m digging ditches or anything – i sit at a desk and am not required to do any heavy lifting. Hell, i don’t have to get up unless i have to pee or go home. Having an awesome husband who works from home and helps take care of me certainly doesn’t hurt, either.
That being the case, i found this article fascinating: Working While Chronically Ill. I’d always been curious about the percentage of people with chronic illnesses who work, and was amazed by this bit:
According to Ms. Joffe, and to research conducted by the National Organization on Disability, only 32 percent of Americans with disabilities (ages 18 to 64) are working, but two thirds of those unemployed would rather be working.
Guh. Thirty-two percent? Daaaaaamn. I’m beating the odds like whoa. Some of that is planning (and Ben working at home is part of that plan), some of that is a stupidly high pain tolerance, and some of that is the sheer bull-headed stubbornness i inherited from my grandma.
Anecdote time: when my grandma was young (i forget what age), she fell and broke her ankle. She went to the hospital, and while she was there, a nurse said to her that it was okay for her to cry if she was in pain. “Will that make the pain stop?” she asked. The nurse said that it wouldn’t affect the pain, whereupon my grandma told her that if that was the case, she didn’t see the point in crying. Yeah. That’s just how we get down in my family.
There’s more stuff worth checking out in the article, including links to some rather helpful-looking sites that i haven’t had a chance to fully explore just yet.
I wanted to write a whole lot more on the subject, but my new meds* are making me woozy and really out of it, so this is all you get for now.
* – My new doc has put me on amitriptyline to try to help regulate my sleep cycles. It is helping, but also making me really sleepy all the time. Hopefully it’ll even out soon and i’ll manage to not nod off during the day.