The "Luxury" of Being Sick

An acquaintance of mine told me Friday, as she has on other occasions, that she doesn't have the "luxury" of being sick. She said this with a scowl on her face because she's working very hard at the job she has chosen. She has aches and pains and works through them. I'm glad she can do that.

I, on the other hand, have spent the last five years recovering from multiple illnesses, one of which nearly killed me as I had internal bleeding with ulcers, and another which forced me to use a cane for a long time until I finally, with lots of hard work and therapy, was able to do away with the cane.

That doesn't mean I am well. It means I am better, but my stamina is awful and my anxiety levels high. I can't sit for long periods, or stand for long periods. I can't lift anything heavy. I don't eat tomatoes or foods that will cause my stomach to act up.

I do the laundry, I go to the grocery store, I make dinner, I keep the house reasonably clean though I cannot run the vacuum so I have someone come and help me with that. I still write some. Not as much as I'd like but I am not floating in my bed, waiting on someone to bring me an aspirin.

I do what I can.

This acquaintance - we used to be friends, but we aren't anymore - has no empathy for people who are suffering. She seems to believe if she can work with a sore shoulder then everyone else should be able to work with whatever is wrong with them. This is how a certain segment of the population thinks, until they find themselves with cancer or on the end of a surgical knife. Then, as happened with my elected official, there may be second thoughts about allowing Medicaid into Virginia. Because golly gee, people do simply get sick through no fault of their own, and it hurts and you feel bad and sometimes you really can't get out of bed.

Being sick is by no means a "luxury." I would trade my "luxury" of being sick for a steady job and good health any time. However, I have always been a sickly person and I don't expect that to change as I age. From the time I was born, according to my mother, I was sick. I had colic, ran fevers, and I was allergic to cow's milk and formula and had to drink goat's milk. I fell down and dislocated a shoulder, I cracked my head open on something, and I had surgery to remove a pre-cancerous mole - all before I was five.

I used to miss 30 days of school, at least, every year. I kept a cough, and bronchitis and/or pneumonia found me every winter. I caught each bug that went around. And still I weathered it and made straight As.

You don't make straight As and be sick by sitting in the bed and not doing your homework.

This same acquaintance once told me she would never hire me to work, because I had a 3.96 GPA in college. People who make As don't have to work for them, she said. The people who makes Bs and Cs have to work to get those grades.

I don't know where someone gets this idea. Does she think I did not spend hours upon hours studying and reading, taking notes, learning the things I needed to know?

My life has always been about work. My father did not let us have much down time - we lived on a farm and I had chores. I watched after my brother. I fed birds. I gathered eggs. I brought in firewood. I helped keep the house clean. One of my finest hours was the day my mother told me, about a year after I'd married and left home, that she had had no idea how much work I'd actually done around the house until I was gone. Finally, some recognition for all those towels I'd folded.

After I married, I worked. Not only did I work, I put myself through college. I worked full time and went to college part-time. I did this for eight years. It took eight years to finish school because I had many surgeries during that time and I had to drop out of college a few semesters because I couldn't drive. I lost a few jobs because of illness, too. And I finally stopped working "for the man" altogether in the mid-1990s because I was having three-day migraines at least three times a month. I couldn't stay that sick and work, so I started freelancing full time so that when I needed to rest, I could rest. But even then, though I was working from home, I worked very hard at my writing. I wrote thousands - yes, thousands - of articles.

You don't do that because you have the "luxury" of being sick. You do that in spite of being sick.

And then being sick finally took its toll and my poor body said, "Enough of this. Stop with the stress and the stuff you shouldn't be doing or you'll bleed to death from these ulcers."

Lesson learned, though it took two years and much prodding from my doctor before I finally gave up my newspaper work. Then I worked hard at physical therapy. I did my exercises. And while I'm not healthy, I'm functional.

I'm functional because I worked at it. I was sick because I was sick, and not because I had the "luxury" of being sick. Sick people do not consider it a luxury because it isn't one. Sick people generally have less money, because they work less, they can't enjoy life like a healthy person can, and if you're disabled to any degree the people in the USA look down on you as if you're some kind of ratty flea with something contagious. I feel sure there are more sick people than healthy people in this country, because we're a pretty sick country overall, but I think a lot of people tough it out. And toughing it out has consequences that, in the long run, are not pretty.

No one has the "luxury" of being sick. If anyone ever says that to me again, I think I might have to punch that person in the mouth.