At which stage of a sickness do you decide not to go to work?

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I’m a freelancer and not going to work for me means not earning money. Losing one working day means losing one-fifth of the whole income of a month.

Well, today I canceled my commission for Thursday in advance. Means 4 days earlier I decided to tell them I cannot come, so they could have time to find somebody else to do the job.

My illness started about three weeks ago and since then, I have some normal days and some days I just have to stay in bed.

Obviously it was impossible to tell if this coming Thursday would be one of those painful days in bed or a happy day out!

I also could not tell if going to work and stay sitting for almost 8-10 hours, would not worsen my problems. Therefore, I finally decided not to take the risk and called the client to cancel.

but the bad feeling stayed with me. Thinking that it was not too bad after all or I could eventually handle a painful day at work .. .

Have you had a similar situation? or can imagine having it?
What is your pain threshold? when do you usually give up thinking about your regular responsibilities and give a second thought about your health issues?!