Chronic illness, Working at Home and Resilience

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Do you harbor deep envy  for those who work at home?  Do you think all your problems would be solved because now you could take care of your health and still work?

Easy to understand.  I work from home and I can tell you that it does make it easier to navigate — in some ways.  But as in all things in life it’s not as “easy” or straightforward it seems.  (sigh).

As usual, I have some thoughts on how to meet these challenges.  This week I’m “Guest Posting” on the Work at Home Woman blog and you can read about my ideas here.

Are you ready for the elephant in the room?

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This month’s  career collective bloggers question is:  “What should job seekers do now to prepare for interviews?”   Scroll down for thoughtful ideas and useful tips from my fellow bloggers. MY FANTASY: With every chronic illness diagnosis comes a toolkit filled with all you need to prepare for the unpredictable  (more on this in myRead More

3 Things you need to move from – to +

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Chronic illness can foster a bad attitude. Have you noticed how negative thinking creates negative behavior?  Now flip that idea and you’re into the positive psychology school of  thought.  I’m skeptical about  ‘quick fixes’  for tough, long standing behavior. But from my own experience, you can retrain the way you think. It takes 3 things:Read More

Good grief, charley brown.

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Do you live with debilitating chronic illness that has led to significant life changes?  If you’re nodding “yes”,  most likely you’ve felt a strong sense loss. But have you  experienced grief?  I thought about the importance of grieving after reading two articles recently. The first was a news article about James Levine, the  Metropolitan OperaRead More

Can we hope health care "reform" will help the chronically ill?

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Is the  health care reform bill a step toward ensuring that anyone living with chronic illness will  receive  “adequate” medical  treatment? Or is it just more help for the healthy? I don’t have the answer.  But I’m delighted that in the increased attention on the burden that chronic illness places on individuals and society whenRead More

Advice you didn't ask for. What's your response?

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Chronic illness, complicated as it is, leaves many searching for a simple answer. Lately, a tantalizing headline has gotten much  press in the social media ‘disease’ community (yes, I’m on  twitter and you can tweet me @WorkWithIllness): “Exercise can Quiet Anxiety that Comes With Illness”. Help me, please.  What’s the news here?   That people whoRead More

Finding opportunity in quicksand

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Being a  career collective blogger gives me a monthly reminder that people living with illness face the same issues as healthy people. This month’s  questions are  (you can find links to my fellow blogger posts  at the end of this article): What do you do when you’re really, really, really discouraged  about your unsuccessful jobRead More

Do you suffer from this syndrome: trying to do too much?

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This weekend, while preparing our taxes, my husband mentioned that he’d been paying a credit card  expense.  It was a small monthly fee and he’d assumed it was a business expense that I’d mistakenly put on our personal charge card.  The unfortunate truth is, it’s not unusual that I make such mistakes. But I didn’tRead More

Are you looking for support at work?

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Living with chronic illness can leave even the toughest person feeling vulnerable.  You just wish that other people could “get it”, don’t you? I know from personal experience how hard this is in a marriage  (How a Marriage Survives When One Person Gets Sick, MORE Magazine) .  And marriage is all about the relationship,  whereRead More

Are you feeling that hang-dog look?

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Holidays and a New Year.  It can  be a time of reflection – if you’re not too busy just getting by. Or maybe, the problem is you don’t know what to reflect on?   It’s all so overwhelming. You might start here.  Ask yourself, “What can I do for myself, right now so I canRead More

Avoid this minefield: Drive Your Bus

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This month’s Career Collective topic is: Specific tips to help job seekers ramp up their efforts for the holiday season and the new year. At the end of this post, check out the collective wisdom of the career bloggers in the collective. Are you living with chronic illness and looking at the holiday season withRead More

Cooking lessons my mother didn't teach me

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Deep in Thanksgiving cooking and I’m trying to modify  the smashed sweet  potatoes with apples recipe for 20.   Wondering how I’ll fit it in the oven with the 26 lb turkey, mushroom/sausage stuffing, brussel sprouts with carmelized onions and almonds,  and popovers? At the same time,  I’ve got my laptop in the kitchen and I’mRead More

Preparedness: It's not just for boy scouts

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This month the “Career Collective” collaborates with Quint’s Job Action Day.  We’re asked to provide workers and job seekers with information, ideas and concrete steps to secure their futures in a changed economy.  As always, I’ll do that with  working with chronic illness in mind. When I graduated with a degree in photojournalism in 1973, Read More

Forget the cookies! Start with vision

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Although I focus on issues that come up working while living with chronic illness, I believe healthy & people with illness face the same  issues.  Just a different emphasis.  As a member of a new community of resume writers and career coaches called the Career Collective, this post is one of many responses to theRead More

Conducting life, work and illness

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What happens if you’re a world class conductor and health problems prevent you from doing your job? James Levine, conductor of the Boston Symphony and the New York Metropolitan Opera is finding that out.   He’s missed opening performances — and an indeterminate number hereafter — for surgery on a herniated disc. And this isn’t theRead More

When Chronic Illness and Marriage Collide

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The first sign that I didn’t have a healthy body came in my mid 20’s. I developed  numbness in my fingers.  My boyfriend, Jake, a medical student, was  there  when I went for a myelogram, a very uncomfortable test.  A few months later, when I developed the  first of hundreds of urinary infections, he pickedRead More

I think I can, I think I can.

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“If you think you can, you’re right. If you think you can’t, you’re right, too.”  Henry Ford. Career and chronic illness. Not exactly 2 things that go together, like peanut butter and jelly? In fact,  it’s my experience that most people who learn that they’re living with a chronic illness figure that career can noRead More

Can you job hunt, live with illness and stay motivated

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Looking for a job in a depressed economy and  living with a chronic illness that  makes your employment history a bit “sketchy”. Yikes, it doesn’t sound pretty.  But at the moment, that describes many of my clients.  Not surprising, is it?   Ten years ago, a robust, growing economy made it much easier for anyoneRead More

Make living with cancer more than about the loss

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I’m lucky to count among my professional friends, Elizabeth Genovese, M.D. (internal and occupational medicine).  We met several years ago on a committee charged with creating suggestions for improving the  Social Security disability evaluation process. For the past year,  Elizabeth has been living with a rare and difficult to treat cancer. Her belly is terribly Read More

Fibro: Living with disease and the sceptics

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When I read a blog post (Fibromyalgia Negative Press) —  citing a newspaper columnist’s remark about people with Fibro who want to collect a government check and pop pills  (Random Nonsense ) —   I thought:  I’m glad I live with multiple sclerosis! After several weeks of deep pain and fatigue, I’m actually grateful toRead More

5 things I want you to know about working while living with a chronic illness

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Most of us find that other people can be clueless about what it’s like to live with a chronic illness.  It makes sense since this is invisible, unpredictable and often debilitating.  It’s hard enough to explain this to your friends and family. It’s even more difficult to explain to co workers who only know youRead More

Sotomayer has proven by her record that diabetes is not a factor in her performance

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Diabetes should not be the reason that Sonia Sotomayor does not get approved for the Supreme Court. Sotomayor acknowledges that diabetes has informed the person she has become. But like all of us, there are a multitude factors that create her life story,  including growing up poor, losing her father at a young age, beingRead More

What do you do when you have to keep going?

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Recently I experienced, yet again, how hard it is to work and live with waxing/waning chronic illness. And this just reinforces why I think that that working is the smartest thing I can do for myself. When we traveled  to California to visit friends, I knew it would tire me. The time change and longRead More

Your health isn't a sound byte

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Have you noticed how often you’re greeted with,  “Hi, how are you?”   (or “Hey, how ya’ doin’?”), depending on the circles you travel in)? Today I counted 18 times so far and it’s only 4:00pm.   I’m working alone and only left the office for one brief errand.  Do you work in an office withRead More

Chronic illness often means deciding when you're too sick to work

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Do chronic illness symptoms – -multiple sclerosis, colitis, fibromylagia or cancer, fill in the blank  — crop up when you least expect them? Doesn’t it always seem to happen when there’s that big presentation at work or a major meeting requiring a plane flight and overnight stay? Or maybe it’s a regular day at workRead More

Laid off, New Job and Life with Chronic Illness

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In this virtual world so many of us live in, I “met”  fellow traveler, Bernard Farrell, through the vibrant virtual diabetes community. Recently he mentioned on twitter (@BernardF) that he’d gotten a new job.  I didn’t know he was unemployed but saw an opportunity to share his perspective. So, I sent him some questions andRead More

Are you really looking for a job now?

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Over at GL Hoffman’s blog, WhatWouldDadSay,  author/speaker/guru guest,  Seth Godin, explains why:    “Don’t Get a Job Now”. Only Godin could come up with that direct a message.  Even better, he’s got  great points.  If this guy doesn’t motivate you, who can? Speaking of chronic illness —  do you think you should spend your timeRead More

Errors and living with your chronic illness at work

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Are you sick of apologizing for things you can’t help? It was a bad morning for Carol (not her real name). The chronic illness (take your pick: colon, migraine headache, muscle fatigue, breathing problems) was horrible. Only able to pay attention to how badly she felt, she made a quick decision to stay home fromRead More

Avis had it right

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Wouldn’t you know it would take “March Madness” to show us that coming from behind can make you a winner? Two guys at Wharton Behavioral Lab explored the idea that losing can lead to winning because of the strong  motivational effects of being close to your goal (When Losing Leads to a Win). They appliedRead More

Looking at the ground from a seated position

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“…. you have a whole different world view  from a seated position.  A lot of what I see is on the ground.  Issues of race and color become less substantial when you look at the ground.”   Federal Judge Reginald Lindsay who died this week at age 63 from complications from cancer. Reggie Lindsay was anRead More

Looking for work? Try a schedule for your day

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Being employed generally means working on a schedule.  But when you’re unemployed, looking for a job and living with an unpredictable chronic illness,  time has a way of getting turned upside down. OK.  So, now you’re past the relief of  hauling your tired body out of bed each morning to be at work by 8:00am. Read More

Unemployed & looking for work? The good news is your boss can be flexible

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This month’s blog carnival at Somebody Heal Me, is up.  The topic is creating migraine friendly environments. Are you employed and living with a debilitating chronic illness? I’ll bet you’re  dreaming about the day you no longer work. Sure, a job can do a lot of things for you, including giving you a paycheck  (hopefullyRead More

No one ever said that working with chronic illness is easy

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You know that moment when the lightbulb goes on ? I know, too often  it feels like it’s getting darker, not lighter (LOL). But reading Laurie Edwards, achronicdose, describe a recent bout with illness  (On Work and Chronic Illness), was  such an “ah hah!”  moment. In my zeal to encourage people to keep working whileRead More

Does rare mean you don't need to know about it?

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It’s sad that we need to set a “DAY” aside to recognize something as important as rare diseases (and grandparents, secretaries…). Feb 28 is National Rare Disease Day, NORD, notes one of my favorite bloggers, Laurie Edwards (achronicdose).  She should know.  She lives with rare disease. The goal is small:  Raise public awareness (and thenRead More

Children as caretakers

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In yet another example of  how badly we need improved services,  The New York Times, In Turnabout, Children Take Caregiver Role , reports that the number of children taking care of chronically ill parents is increasing. We’re not talking about rural Pakistan.  It’s happening here in the U.S.– and Britain and Australia. As a chronicallyRead More