How Not To Feel Guilty With Chronic Pain: A Guide
The first step is to have chronic pain. I chose* the migraine variety.
Wake up with a migraine, again.
Cancel or reschedule the important meetings you had today.
Go through the usual mechanisms to help deal with the pain. This could be any or all of the following:
take two Advil with two ibuprofen
You heard somewhere that combining those medications is okay for more pain relief, since they don’t do anything on their own. Absentmindedly wonder about your liver health.
Drink a large iced coffee with an extra shot of espresso
Sometimes caffeine helps. It’s a 50/50 shot on whether it makes the migraine worse, though.
employ your patent-pending Headache Hat (ice cubes in a resealable bag)
Ah, sweet cold.
eat food that’s high in protein
A friend suggested this one. Surely it can’t make your pain worse.
go lay down in a dark room for a while
If you don’t feel better: great! You can’t feel guilty because you still feel like shit.
If you do feel better: feel immense remorse that you had to reschedule your meetings today because certainly you are fine and could have powered through those things anyways. Surely your pain wasn’t that bad if you could use step 3 to feel better. Maybe you’re just being dramatic.**
BONUS:
6. Try to do work, because you feel better, and get out of bed to immediately fall over because your vision and depth perception is still Very Bad.
*NOTE: Having chronic pain or illness isn’t a choice. I am using this terminology for comedic effect.
**NOTE: this is sarcasm.