runlindsayrun

To Work or Not To Work

In honour of Invisible Chronic Illness Awareness Week, I stole this piece of an article from keepworkinggirlfriend.com:

Pain can ruin your judgment and your mood. It can also take over your being. One question I frequently hear is: “should I stop working because the pain is so bad?” My answer is: NO!

When you’re living with pain, it’s easy to think that working makes it harder to handle the pain or even makes the condition worse. But here are two reasons that isn’t necessarily the case:
1. Becoming engaged in something outside of your body distracts you from the pain and can make it more bearable.
2. Creating a feeling of involvement and success reminds you that you are more than this sick body in pain.

I’m not saying that this is easy to do. It takes extraordinary effort. But not working seems to have too much of an adverse affect. There’s no reason to get up and out each day, you lose the interpersonal engagement of the workplace, you lose your sense of value, and it’s usually a financial hardship.

I don’t mean to imply it’s easy to keep working when you live in chronic pain. It’s just that from what I’ve seen in my own life and those I work with, not working does not make your life easier.

The challenge worth taking is to figure out what work you can do and how you can do it.

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PS - The new sleeping pill knocked me right out with a 1/2 dose. I am such a lightweight! I woke up 9 hours later with an incredibly sore, tingly arm (I had apparently fallen asleep on top of it and hadn't moved a molecule all night). I was very groggy for about 15 minutes, and then totally fine. Maybe a tiny little bit disoriented today, but I feel like I slept properly for the first time in a long time. A good mid-term solution? Time will tell. I promised myself I'd give it an honest effort until the 26th before I judge.

Labels: Arthritis/Fibromyalgia, Stuff I Found Online

posted by Lindsay @ 12:54 PM