Maintaining Frugal Behavior While Injured or Ill

About two weeks ago, I managed to herniate a disc in my back.  Unfortunately, this was not entirely surprising, as I had bad lower back pain starting about 10 years ago, and evidently have a congenital condition that predisposes me to these issues.  On the bright side, my back seems to be recovering fairly well, and I’m hopeful that one month from the injury (the normal time for recovery) I will be fully recovered. Unfortunately, the ability to do lots of things is problematic while injured, which made me re-evaluate a number of priorities during this time.  Here are some things that I’m doing that don’t require a lot of extra funds:

–Give yourself time for recovery — I am relatively bad at this, although I’ve known of numbers friends who have pushed themselves too hard (especially trying to return to exercising) that they end up delaying their recovery or risking reinjury.  Avoiding reinjury and recovering well is my first priority.

-Prioritize that which does not need to be done — this is another area that I am relatively bad at, basically not trying to do things that really don’t need to be done, at least not now.

–Rethink the daily routine — in my regular routine, I would walk to most of my errands, including carrying back large backpacks of goods and groceries.  Obviously, I am not doing this right now, but fortunately all of the stores that I go to will offer help to load the car and retrieve items.

–Be mindful of activities that can add up to a lot of spending — for example going out to eat.  As I am the primary food preparer in the house, it would be really easy to skip the preparation and simply go out, or have someone else pick up take out.  For both health and budgetary reasons, I don’t like this option. Instead, my husband has been good at helping to retrieve things from shelves, doing anything that requires lifting or bending which then makes cooking manageable.  Fortunately, I have a number of dishes in the freezer as well as fast-cook meals making meal planning relatively easy.  I’m also making sure that I don’t use shopping therapy (especially the internet enabled variety) to compensate.

I’m interested hearing how you cope with injury or illness.

shared at this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance