There are a lot of things that can get on the nerves of a
person with chronic illness. Many of them are those off the cuff comments made
by outsiders, who perhaps speak with no malice intended, but still manage to
rub us up the wrong way. One of these such comments was part of a conversation I
had the other day regarding my sick absence from work in the past few years. (I
should precursor this with a bit of background: my requiring time off work due
to my condition has lessened dramatically both since my initial diagnosis,
surgery and since I started my current treatment (wondrous Infliximab
infusions).
Of course I still need time off for all the various
appointments I need to attend and much of that I take from my own leave
allocation to ward off the nagging fear of being made unemployed at any given
moment. I say my need for sick leave has decreased because I’ve seen the stats.
My stays in hospital are less and less, and although this treatment brings with
it many offshoots causing other health problems, I am managing to ‘manage’.
This makes me happy for several reasons: I am getting better and there is a
visible record of this in black and white, I am making my employer happy as I am
able to work more than I could, and I am no longer living under a cloud of terror
at the prospect of being sacked.
So there you have it, the stats can’t be wrong. I am a much
more visible employee albeit with an invisible illness and am happy about it.
It may be hard to believe but the majority of chronically ill people don’t want to miss work. It makes us feel redundant
and useless and can again serve to separate us from ‘normal’ people.
SO back to my original reason for this blog.
The other day someone told me how pleased they were that they
hadn’t had a sick day in a whole year. My first thought was, ‘WONDERFUL!
Amazing you haven’t felt ill in a whole 12months!’ Swiftly followed by an
internal (I can only DREAM of achieving such a feat). I politely told this person
I was really pleased for them (I genuinely am) and thought maybe we’d leave it
at that – mainly because I could sense “And you?” was coming round the
conversational corner at breakneck speed. Arrive it did and when I confided how
many days absence I’d had in a 12month period she was AGHAST. Knowing already
of my condition and various issues I have had in the past few years she was
still astounded at the number of days I’ve been off. (Side note – it’s less than
a month). I then swiftly tried to justify myself, saying things like “Oh you
should have been around in 2011 I was off for about 5months after my op!” - Desperately
trying to make up for my behaviour and show what a good girl I’ve been since. GOD
KNOWS WHY.
Wait, I do – GUILT.
As mentioned previously we want to work. We want to be active and useful and ‘normal’. We try
our hardest to do so. We are absolutely delighted to hear you are well, and
have been well enough to attend work every day; but please don’t make us feel
like shit because we haven’t. Encourage us instead. Gloating about your
achievements is never cool – even less so when it makes us feel like failures.
Remind
us you’re glad we’re alive, because that’s definitely an achievement we can get
on board with.
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