Living With Fibromyalgia and Earning Money From Home

Sharing is caring!

A Guest Post on Living With Fibromyalgia

I am a full-time self-employed and have been fortunate enough to work for myself for the last few years. I work from home, full-time, and I have no boss to speak of. I don’t have to worry if I need a sick day and today I am going to share with you how this came about.

Back in 2009, I started to feel under the weather. My GP told me, time and time again, that I needed to make some lifestyle changes. I joined the gym, lost some weight and stopped smoking.

Despite this, I still felt unwell, worse than ever. Eventually, I asked to see another GP within my practice who ran a number of tests.

In 2010 I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, that affects the thyroid. Then in more recent years, I have been diagnosed with arthritis, fibromyalgia and a few ‘lesser’ conditions. I was fortunate in that medication was able to treat my thyroid, along with radiation treatment.

Working Part Time

In 2011 my husband and I made the decision that I would start working part-time. For the next 2 years, I worked in a jeweller. I really enjoyed it and liked the people I worked with, mostly.

However, what I didn’t like was that I would have to call in sick every month or two and I started to feel like I was affecting the small team I worked with.

Eventually, I quit, quite suddenly, and decided to go it alone, working for myself online.

Knowing how hard it can be to obtain sickness benefits in this country now I decided not to apply.

This made me more determined to make money myself and this motivation has pushed me through some difficult times. 

However, I do realise how hard it can be for people to survive without these benefits and I don’t judge anyone who needs to rely on them.

When I stopped working I worried about money, however, my lovely husband helped with that. He volunteered to take care of our rent and bills, leaving me free to spend the money that I made on fun for us.

Over the years I have bought us a car, paid for holidays and helped us build up savings and become debt-free.

I have been able to repay my husband’s generosity and in a couple of years, we should be able to buy our own home for the first time thanks to our hard work.

Despite being ‘better’ in some respects I suffer from the typical fibromyalgia symptoms. I have days where I have no energy, need to sleep but can’t because of insomnia and generally just feel rubbish.

 By exercising, keeping stress levels low and eating well, mostly, I am able to keep myself in the best health possible.

Because I work for myself I am able to have days off when I need them. If I am having a good day I can push through and make extra money or look for more opportunities.

Typically I find that working from home works really well for me.

Anyone with fibromyalgia, or an auto-immune disease like Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, will know how hard it can be to make others understand how you feel.

I have had friends in the past that have fizzled out when I don’t always want to go out gallivanting every single day.

However, I have also come across other friends who understand that I can’t help having widespread pain sometimes and being a bit unsociable at times.

My family have been supportive and in turn, now that I am getting great opportunities through blogging I am able to share these out a little.

I am now making at least £2,000 a month, from a variety of websites and mobile applications. I feel blessed that I was able to take the leap, without relying on benefits and become full-time self-employed.

I love my life and have learned to appreciate the smallest things, like waking up pain-free for a day or enjoying some digging down at our allotment.

Sure, there are bad days, even people without chronic illness have those, but when the good days are here I have the time to really appreciate them.

I can take a day off whenever I want to, to spend time with family, and I haven’t had to miss many social functions for years now, besides due to illness.

Because I never applied for sickness benefits I don’t have to worry if I do have a good day about somebody reporting me! I can take each day as it comes and lives my life how I want to. I also get to spend my days at home with my beautiful new daughter – who took 7 long years to arrive! The last few years working from home have allowed me to focus on fertility treatments and obtain what we really want in life – a child and a great work/life balance.

If you are interested in finding out more about how I make money online you can visit my website at www.katykicker.com.

I regularly share my monthly earnings and details of the websites and mobile applications that I use to make money online.

Not all of the money that I make is easily achievable for everyone, as I have spent two years building up a website, however, you can make at least £500 a month using the different websites that I use.

My methods for money making include paid surveys, matched betting, website testing, mystery shopping, taking part in focus groups and much more.

Take care
Katy Stevens

It’s a long term idea but you might want to collect old and new coins. Check out, change checker. It’s a great site to help you check modern coins that may be rare and valuable and could be worth more than you think!