People with chronic illnesses cannot go to the doctor every time they are too sick to go into work. Their doctors give them medications to manage their illness and trust them to take their medications responsibly. This affects work relationships in two major ways.
First, you cannot lie about being too sick to work ever. Your employer must trust your word that you are too sick to work. If you break that trust, it may cost you your job. With healthy people, this simply means a doctors note is required for each time they are sick. For a person with chronic illness, it has already been established that this is not possible, so they are put on probation and if it happens again, they are fired.
Second, you absolutely must know your limits. You cannot work through being too sick to work. It is better to stay home if you are unsure about being able to make it through the day. If you feel better, and can go in for half a day, then go in. Otherwise you must maintain the sick role until you can return (no going out etc). This is also to maintain the trust relationship. If you work while sick, you may become a liability and break the trust of your employer. If you feel better when staying home and are seen out and about (seen as being fine), then you also break the trust even if you were too sick to work but ok to do other things. Again, for a healthy person, this would mean getting a doctor's note. For a person with a chronic illness, this can cost you your job.
For healthy people reading this, here is an example of a sick day for a migraine:
You wake up early (3-8am) feeling like a zombie. If you are unable to fall asleep again, you realize as soon as you sit up that something is wrong. It hurts to look at the clock on your phone. It's an abstract pain behind one eye - piercing and pounding but without a precise location. You are dizzy and disoriented. You are nauseous but hungry and dehydrated. Your first thought is that you just need to eat, drink water and take Tylenol/caffeine and you'll be fine. You can only handle one glass of water and a couple bites of plain food (crackers, apple or apple sauce, no dairy, etc). Light, noise and movement increase the intensity of your headache. It spreads to your entire scalp and down your neck; your face feels twitchy; your muscles are tense and aching; you feel more nauseous. You now realize it's a severe migraine. You call in sick and take your meds. All of your symptoms worsen over the hour it takes for your meds to start working. You're restless but you can't move; movement makes it worse. You shut out as much light as possible; light makes it worse even with your eyes closed. You shut out as much noise as possible; you can't listen to music or the tv; you can't use ear plugs because your eardrums are pounding as if next to an amplifier at a rock concert; even the thought of ear plugs or head phones hurts. So you lay perfectly still in the silence with your eyes closed, praying that you don't vomit, until your meds kick in. When the meds finally start working you can either sleep or sit like a zombie and read or watch TV. But you cannot function. Thinking hurts. Talking or listening hurts. Moving hurts. Eating hurts. Drinking hurts. The TV or book hurts, but you must do something to calm your mind.
Now, understand that this can last for up to 72 hours (more than that and they hospitalize you).
Thank you for reading this. I hope it has given you a greater understanding of my suffering and the suffering of people with chronic illnesses.
