Archive for April, 2008

Working with a chronic illness

Published by Lindsay on April 23, 2008 in In the news. 1 Comment

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.

Disabled vs. Challenged

Published by Nix on April 23, 2008 in Rantybits. 0 Comments

Disabled vs. Challenged

A discussion between Lindsay and I this morning got some of the brainybits moving. We were talking about an article (she’ll post a link later, I’m not stealing that thunder) about a woman who is an advocate for people with chronic illnesses to find ways to stay in the workforce.

I am lucky enough (::knock on wood::) that my physical limitations have yet to lose me a job. That being said, they’ve come damned close, and that makes me wonder if it’s “fair” (a word that I really dislike using, as fair relates [in the Tao of Nix] to the universe’s constantly ebbing and flowing balance of positive and negative – by claiming something is “unfair,” I [at least partially] believe that you are making a judgment, something that is not your privilege to do, and are therefore creating an unnatural addition of negative) to have come so close to unemployment due to a physical condition that I can only attempt to keep in check. I didn’t CHOOSE to have Fibro, nor is there any sort of magical pill or exercise or surgery that I can have to fix the problem.

That brings us to the subject of this post. WAY too many people with chronic illnesses end up on disability. Why is this acceptable? 95% of the time, I am a valuable asset to any job. I’m an extremely hard worker, I’m honest, and as long as my body cooperates, I’m reliable. My needs for the occasional extra days off would be met, only if I were to label myself as “disabled,” something that I am simply not willing to do. I do NOT accept that I am disabled. If a label is required, I’m moderately challenged.

Where do we draw the line between useful and not? Why do we feel the need to have only one or the other? I don’t want cash or medical assistance from the government, but if I find myself unable to keep a job because my employer can’t (or is unwilling to) accept that my condition will sometimes keep me from being able to work, what other option do I have?

As I told Lindsay, I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this. Part of me is angry that something that I can’t control is in some ways held against me, but another part of me tells me what I tell other people when they offer sympathies: I’m SO grateful that I have legs to ache, I have joints to hurt. Sometimes we have to remember that for other people to take our illnesses seriously, we have to do the same from within.

Cheap traction trick for back pain relief

Published by Lindsay on April 8, 2008 in Tips and tricks. 2 Comments

For the past few months i’ve been dealing with a rather nasty case of piriformis syndrome, leading to pain and numbness from some rather pissed off sciatic nerves. Last night, the pain was so bad that i just couldn’t sleep at all. It’s been years since i’ve had pain that ferocious.

I’ve known a fair number of people with back pain, and one of the more common successful methods of relief/treatment involve traction – hanging (often upside-down) off the ground to take the pressure off of your spine. I’ve envied the people who could afford all the toys involved in this process – gravity boots and inversion tables.

Now, a pair of gravity boots (without the frame) will run you around $60 – not including the frame. The frame is only gouda-knows how much, depending on whether you get a free-standing frame or a bar to put at the top of a doorway. An inversion table goes for roughly $150-$350. And then you’ve got to figure out where to put all this stuff. The table requires no small amount of room/floor space; a doorway frame for some boots requires faith in architecture (hard to come by in older houses, eek).

But a pair of crutches? Only about $25 on amazon.com – and you can stow ‘em in a corner of your closet. Hell, if you’re as clumsy and accident-prone as i am, you may already have a pair lying around the house somewhere.

A few years ago, i had a rather unfortunate mishap and found myself on crutches for two (almost three) months. During that time, my chiropractor was amazed at how well my back was doing. Seems that the regular traction from swinging around on crutches really did wonders for my spine. It also was pretty awesome for my upper body strength, lol.

Just now, i just spent about five minutes swinging back and forth on my old crutches. After about two minutes of that, i felt a pop in about five different places on my back, all at once. I even got something of a head rush; yay for increased blood flow to the brain. Holy sweet cheeses and mother of gouda, i haven’t felt this good in i don’t know how long.

Now, time for anti-inflammatories and a good twenty minutes with an ice pack. I foresee that as being Incredibly Good Times.