Nick Bates, The Chronic Coach

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Nick Bates, The Chronic Coach

No bullsh*t.

The Chronic Coach
Single dad | Chronic illness
Chronic pain, mobility issues and the reality behind them
Honest conversations about masculinity, fatherhood and real life
No fluff.

15/02/2026

There’s a difference between being tired and being ill.

Tired people rest and feel better.

Ill people rest and still wake up knackered.

You start to feel like you’re permanently behind in life.

Everyone else is on normal speed.

You’re buffering.

12/02/2026

Today is hard.

I feel like s**t.

Feels like I’m coming down with something on top of everything else.
Body’s flaring up.
Acid reflux kicking off.
Head’s foggy.

Kieran’s been crabby and climbing everything in sight. He doesn’t care that I feel rough. And he shouldn’t have to.

Chronic illness doesn’t pause.
Admin doesn’t pause.
Housing stuff doesn’t pause.
Life doesn’t pause.

When you’re already running close to empty most days, there’s no slack. So when you dip even slightly, it feels like the whole thing starts to wobble.

It’s not dramatic.
I’m not giving up.

It just feels like I’ve been hit by a bus and expected to function.

Today’s one of those days.

11/02/2026

Yesterday I actually finished my to-do list.
For the first time this year.

That almost never happens.
Usually something crops up, or my body taps out, and everything rolls over to the next day… again.

But yesterday I got through it.
Emails.
Phone calls.
Forms.
Chasing things that shouldn’t need chasing.

Living with chronic illness and disability comes with a ridiculous amount of admin.

Hospital appointments.
Medication reviews.
Housing letters.
Benefits stuff.
Referrals.
Waiting lists.
Explaining the same thing to the tenth person who hasn’t read the notes.

And it’s about ten times harder with a 9-month-old crawling around and climbing absolutely everything in sight.

Today though, I feel awful.
Acid reflux kicking off.
Fibro flaring.
Body letting me know exactly what it thinks about yesterday’s productivity.

Just can’t win.

From the outside, it probably looks like I just had a normal, productive day.

But this is the trade-off.

07/02/2026

Just finished a neb and now I’m sorting this lot out for the next couple of weeks.
This is only a selection of my tablets.

I hate doing it, if I’m honest.
But I don’t have a choice.
If I don’t get it organised, I’ll miss things. Guaranteed.

I’ve got a spreadsheet just to keep track of what I take and when.
Morning. Night. Nebs. The lot.

I do it so I can function.
I do it so I can be a dad to the little man.
But f**k me, it’s draining.

Sometimes the meds and the prep feel like a part-time job.
I just don’t get paid for it.

(Kieran’s with his Nana and Grampy while I’ve got all this out, so he’s safe.)

No fluff.
No bu****it.
This is just the reality of it.

04/02/2026

Last night was rough.
Kieran fought sleep for hours.
Hitting me and throwing himself about.

I was already exhausted and already in pain, and by the time he finally went down I had nothing left.

So today every muscle and joint is screaming, and my head feels like I’ve got the worst hangover imaginable.
Except I don’t drink.

Today is slow.
Because tomorrow’s a busy one.

03/02/2026

This is one of my favourite parts of being his dad.

He’s asleep on me and I can’t move without my body screaming.

It hurts.

It’s hard.

And I still wouldn’t trade this moment for anything.

I know many of you are sitting in the same "painful peace" today.

I see you.

31/01/2026

Kieran’s gone from crawling to pulling himself up on everything.

The sofa.
The side table.
The cabinet under the TV.

Anything he can get his hands on.

He’s doing really well developmentally, but it can be bloody terrifying.
Not because he shouldn’t be doing it.
But because my reaction time isn’t what it used to be, and my body doesn’t move fast when I need it to.

I’m slower.
More careful.
A lot more aware of every movement.

I love watching him figure the world out and and see his beaming smile.
I just wish my body could keep up with him sometimes.

30/01/2026

Why are we still pretending we’re “fine”?

A lot of men are drowning in chronic illness, but you rarely hear anything about it.

Not because it’s rare.

Because we’ve been fed a load of bo****ks.
We’re told to man up, cope quietly, and adapt without complaint.

But let’s be honest. Chronic illness doesn’t just affect your joints, lungs or body. It’s a thief. It comes to steal your:

Strength
Independence
Career
S*x life
Identity

When those things start to shift, most of us don’t have the words for it. We start to feel like a nobody, because society ties a man’s value to what he can do, not who he is.

So we minimise it.
We joke.
We hit the painkillers harder, or head to the whiskey.
We push on longer than we should, only to f**k us up more in the long run.
We withdraw, because that feels easier than admitting we’re grieving the life we thought we’d have.

From the outside, it may look like resilience.
But on the inside, it’s isolation, shame, and a lot of unspoken pain.

We need to stop pretending this isn’t happening.
Because the silence does real damage, even when no one else can see it.

27/01/2026

I just want to say thank you.

To everyone who liked, commented, or messaged me after my last post. It genuinely meant a lot.

I don’t always know what to say back.
Sometimes I don’t even have the energy to reply properly.
But I see it. All of it.

This stuff isn’t easy to share, especially when you’re already exhausted and in pain.
So knowing it landed with people mattered more than you probably realise.

I’m not here to be inspirational.
I’m not here to have answers.

I’m just being honest about where I’m at.
And it helped knowing I wasn’t just talking to myself again.

So yeah.

Thank you.

23/01/2026

I’ve been quiet since the 7th of November, and I want to explain why properly.

It started with a really bad chest infection. I was quite ill and just trying to get through each day.

Then, just as I started to think things might be improving health-wise, a major family situation hit out of nowhere. I won’t go into details, but I suddenly became a single dad to a 6-month-old.

I’ve been a single dad before. I raised my daughter on my own for years. But this time is different. Back then, I didn’t have fibromyalgia. I didn’t have TBM. I didn’t have severe mobility issues. I’ve always had chest problems, but my body wasn’t like this.

I’ve now been a single dad again for nearly two months, and f**k me, it’s hard.

A crawling baby.
Sleepless nights.
Me sat on the edge of the bed in tears at stupid o’clock, asking myself how the hell I’m meant to do this while my body is screaming in agony.

On top of everything else, I’ve recently been told my hips are completely misshapen due to lack of blood supply, caused by years of steroids. They’re basically dead. At 36, I’m now looking at a double hip replacement.

That’s a sentence I still can’t quite wrap my head around.

And honestly, some days it feels like every time I turn around, there’s another part of my body letting me down. You start to wonder what else is going to break next.

Fatigue and fluctuating health mean absolutely f**k all to a baby. They don’t care. You don’t get a choice. You just keep going.

I am struggling. I won’t pretend otherwise.

I am also incredibly grateful to my sister, my mum and my dad for helping me keep my head above water, because without them, I don’t know how I’d be doing this.

So yeah, that’s where I’ve been.

I’m still here.
I’m still standing.
And I’m back.

I’ll be posting when I can. I will post real life, not just the polished version. I’ve got some ideas about what I want to do with this page, including certain themes or days where I talk about specific things, and I really want to give this a proper go and get it off the ground.

I’m also going to try and break my fear of video, even if my voice shakes and it’s rough around the edges.

This page is about real life with chronic illness, and this is my real life right now.

Thanks to anyone who’s stuck around.
Nick

04/11/2025

I'm checking in because I'm knackered, and you probably are too.

If you have a chronic illness, you know the biggest mistake you keep making.

You wake up, maybe feeling slightly less s**t than usual, and your brain screams: "GO! DO EVERYTHING YOU MISSED! NOW!"

Don't Do It!

That slight bit of relief you felt will put you into an even deeper crash if you decide to go and do everything. It's a warning to protect your energy. You crash because you only ever rest when you're completely broken and forced into bed.

You are fighting this wrong.

The best thing to do is to rest when you can afford to, not just when you have to.

That is the only way to break this miserable cycle and to stop f**king yourself up.

Question: What is the one thing that seems to cause your crashes?

03/11/2025

Right, let’s talk about this stupid diet.

I started it for the acid reflux and bloat. Yeah, the bloat is better, and I've shed 9lb, which is a bonus. But I did this to feel better, and I feel worse now than when I started.

Here's the circle of s**t I'm stuck in:

I spend hours in the kitchen doing all the prep this diet demands. The standing and effort cause serious pain in my back, legs, and knees. I end up dosing up on painkillers just to get through the day. The painkillers then cause the severe acid reflux I was trying to solve in the first place.

And just to top it off, trying to do all this while I'm weaning down the steroids (now at 6mg) isn't helping either. The physical pain is already ramped up, and I'm pushing through it just to cook a meal.

I can't keep destroying myself with effort just to eat well. I'd rather eat reasonably well and not make this whole mess worse every day by standing in the kitchen.

So, I'm stepping back for now, with the view of continuing once I've got some decent pain relief. I'll finish what I've prepped, but no more standing there for hours.

Question: What's your go-to food, when you're in too much pain to stand cooking?

Address

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Website

http://www.nick-bates.com/

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