Chronic Illness and Guilt

I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about the consequences of my various illnesses. My boyfriend and I quarrel a lot lately–there’s tension because I need a lot of help and I’m bitter about it, I’m very moody because of the pain and not easy to be around. I feel like a financial burden to my family. I miss a lot of work, sporadically. It’s difficult to plan events with friends and family when I’m having flares, and I never know if a migraine will arise. My boyfriend and I can’t travel much together because of my limitations, nor can we engage in activities that might be tremendous fun if not for my body… like rock climbing. People around me see me suffering and I can see it hurts them. This might be the worst causes of guilt and I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it. But if you’re loved–and we should all be so lucky–there’s no way around this.

None of this is my “fault” exactly, but it is. It is my fault, I’m the one causing all of it somehow. Right? This is the guilt I believe every person who’s chronically ill is tormented by to some extent. If you have good support from people around you, I think it is survivable guilt. I’m lucky; my boyfriend often tells me he’s happy to help me and understands none of this is my fault, and I can tell he actually means it. My parents always offer “any help” they “possibly can” and never blame me. But I still feel guilty. What do I do with all of the guilt?

Step 1: Acknowledge it: I feel guilty. I feel really, really guilty because I’m sick and it has all these consequences, and I don’t like them. I feel like a monster!

Step 2: Feel it: UUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh

Step 3: Distraction/comforts when necessary: Netflix binging, going out to the movies, pizza, work, games, teasing the cats with their favorite rainbow wand

Step 4: Rationalization: Okay, I’m sick. None of this is actually on me. I didn’t purposefully make myself sick, or do anything to get sick. And I’m only seeing ONE MILLION doctors and taking meds, I lost weight because my doctor told me to, I’m seeing a therapist to work on stress management, blah blah blah. I’m trying to be my own best friend here (ew). I’m not perfect but damn it, I’m doing a pretty good job. I’m even still working, which isn’t easy. So I might feel guilty but I don’t deserve to feel guilty.

Step 5: Continue to feel guilty: Wait, what? DAMN it. I’ll try again tomorrow.

Don’t laugh at my headache, yo

Don’t laugh at someone’s illness. It’s not cool.

I was in a meeting yesterday, and someone opened it by mentioning a stressful email sent around a few days prior, which detailed what needed to be prepared for this meeting. The items I personally needed to prepare were, essentially, impossible for me to do. This I made known to my supervisor and he and his supervisor knew I was stressed out about it.

I began having severe occipital neuralgia problems for the remainder of that week (possibly related, as my neck muscles may have tensed from the stress and strangled the nerve, I do not know; the nerve was already causing me problems for the last several weeks), necessitating two occipital nerve blocks, two days in a row. The second because we missed a spot the first time, which was very stressful. Back to the meeting: at the start of this meeting, someone made a joke about how I got a headache from that email and everyone laughed.

Ha. ha. ha. ha….

Isn’t that hilarious? Isn’t occipital neuralgia so funny, everyone? (blank stare) I know that when it feels like someone is taking a stainless steel dental tool and performing cranial surgery on me with it while I’m awake, needling at the back of my head with it, stabbing me with it, incessantly, non-stop, it makes ME want to laugh. And I am certain if it were someone else that were happening to, and a stressful work situation could have potentially triggered it, oh I’d laugh my ass off about it, right? Riiiiight.

You know what really pisses me off about peoples’ attitude about severe chronic headaches in the workplace? Other than the fact that if I were having ambulatory problems no one would be laughing (and if someone were, I’d have a lawsuit on my hands)?

They think they know what a headache is. That’s why they’re acting this way. That’s why they’re lacking compassion.

Listen. You think because you had a bad headache once you know what a headache is. But until you seriously–and I mean seriously–consider hitting your own head against a wall hard enough to render yourself unconscious because the pain is so agonizing you can’t stand being awake any longer, you do not know what head pain is. Until you are projectile vomiting as a direct result of head pain and nothing else, you are in the dark. Have you screamed from the pain? Have you sat in a corner, shaking? Sweating, gripping your bedding? Was your partner looking at you, terrified, not knowing what to do? No? Then please stop laughing unless I am laughing first, because nothing is funny about this. And unless you are familiar with the state of head pain that doesn’t stop for decades, I’m pretty sure you need to never ever laugh at someone who has to get a series of injections into the back of their skull to stop severe head pain.