Working with Chronic Illness is an excellent blog I read, so I recently asked the writer, Rosalind Joffe, to sit down with me for an interview, so she can share her valuable perspective with readers here at How to Cope with Pain.

How to Cope with Pain:  Rosalind, your firm is cicoach.com, described as a resource to professionals with chronic illness.  Why do you do this work and what makes you think people need this?

Rosalind:  I’ve lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years – it’s presently in remission due to drug therapy.  I had very bad ulcerative colitis that was cured with an ileostomy, eye surgery from problems created by Sjogren’s, periodic back pain, adult allergies, and more.  I’ve lived with all this and found that work has been a major factor in keeping me healthy.  And it turns out that recent research in the U.K. supports this.

HtCwP:  Why do you think this is true?

RJ:  First, from personal experience.  I’ve found that to have the most satisfying life, while living with the chronic conditions you’ve got, staying at work is crucial.  Doing something productive provides clear benefits in all the major parts  of your life – it’s in your emotional, psychological, spiritual, social, financial, and medical best interest to keep working.  When you take this on as your primary intention or goal, you’re more likely to achieve.  Specifically, what does this mean?

Well, work provides these benefits:

• You’re motivated to get out of bed and keep moving.
• You’re motivated to get better.
• It’s a way to feel “normal” when your body doesn’t feel normal.
• It’s a way to keep yourself engaged in activities that go beyond your sick body.
• Work allows you to be more than this illness.
• You can socialize around something other than illness.
• Working is essential to a person’s financial well being – through salary and other critical benefits.

That said, it can be a very difficult challenge to keep working.  The workplace is all about what you deliver – so if you’re having trouble producing, the tendency on the part of an employer is to either push you aside or replace you.  The tendency on the part of many people with chronic illness is to find that living with unpredictable illness is difficult enough – running into roadblocks and feeling like you’re a failure at work makes it close to impossible.

HtCwP:  What issues do your clients face?

RJ:  Actually, I find that the people who seek my coaching services are already motivated to keep working, are generally high achievers and think of themselves that way.  They’ve usually put time and attention toward developing a career, and they’ve reaped rewards that they don’t want to lose.  But chronic illness can create concerns that often stay in the background of your consciousness - until some sort of crisis propels them forward.

So here are the top 4 issues I hear about:

1.  How do I judge if my pain/fatigue are just bothersome today – or would working actually make me sicker?
2.  How do I know if, when, and why to talk about my illness or my functioning with my boss?
3.  What do I do if I think that certain modifications at work would make it easier for me to continue to work successfully – but my boss doesn’t seem to be open to this?
4.  What do I do if I think I can’t do the work I do (or did) because of my chronic illness?

HtCwP:  How does your blog Working with Chronic Illness address these?

RJ:  Well, although there are many blogs devoted to specific diseases or even general disease issues, they all focus on the general issues of living with chronic illness.  This is the only blog that pays attention solely to the difficulties you face trying to continue to be successful - and keep working - when you live with chronic illness.  In one way or another, each post focuses on some aspect of these issues.  I love when people comment, because I get to hear their thoughts on these ideas – and readers get to hear from a wider community than just me.

HtCwP:  You also have a blog called, Keep Working, Girlfriend – Women, Work and Chronic Illness, don’t you?

R:  Yes, I started that a little over a year ago.  It’s the title of a book I co-authored, and we created the blog to build some “buzz” for the book.  But the book took longer to get published, and I found that I love blogging, so that blog became more generic.  But now that the book is scheduled for production, the Keep Working, Girlfriend site has turned back to focusing on the issues we specifically address in the book, as well as what’s happening with the book as it comes out.  Our target market is working women, between 30-50 years old or so, who have auto-immune disease.  My co-author, Joan Friedlander, is also blogging with me at this point – and her specialty is running a small business – so she brings a different perspective to these issues.

HtCwP:  It sounds like you cover this topic from all the angles.  Thanks for sharing this.

Any questions or comments for Rosalind - please leave them below!  You can also contact her directly here.

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