Chronic pain is never going to be an easy thing to manage. It’s the kind of condition that has no real answer or cure.
You may be more than aware of where the pain came from, but even when the injury has healed – or you’ve recovered from an illness that seemed to spark it – the pain stays behind as a constant reminder.
And yet, you still have to get back to work and get on with things anyway! That often makes life with chronic pain much harder to navigate, especially if it causes a long term fatigue issue as well.
So what can you do to try and make the job a bit easier on you? Whether you’ve got back pain, hip pain, headaches, or wrist pain, here’s what you might be able to try.
Look into Your Eligibility for Benefits
It’s a good idea to get a sense of what you might qualify for, if you needed to stop working and needed to find another way to pay your bills.
And there are more disabilities that come under benefit eligibility than we’re ever actually told about. After all, there’s no need for a concrete diagnosis when it comes to pain.
It helps if you have evidence from the doctor, but when the pain is bad enough to knock you out of work and prevent you from returning in full, you could qualify without a problem.
Indeed, migraines can qualify for disability benefits, as can any other severe condition that’s been plaguing you and your work efforts for the last 12 months (at least). Even if the pain is hard to quantify, if it’s getting in the way, you could be eligible.
Look into Reasonable Accommodations
The ADA makes it clear that employers have an obligation to change the workplace to suit you – but only if doing so would be reasonably in line with what they’re capable of changing.
As such, your employer can adjust a few things for you, if they’re causing more pain (or more flare ups of your pain).
They should work with you to come up with these accommodations, as they need to be specific to the pain that’s preventing you from being able to work in the same way as everyone else.
Here’s just a few of the most common reasonable accommodations that employers are typically able to put in place:
Limiting the weight you can work with
This can prevent you from being asked to lift or move things that could make your chronic pain worse.
Providing more time to get the job done
This is most commonly applied to written communication tasks, such as writing emails or filling out workplace records.
Getting you reassigned
If there’s no other accommodations that can be made, your employer also has the opportunity to provide a different role within the organization.
Chronic pain isn’t easy to work with, but there are changes you can make to lessen its impact on your working life.
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