I'm concerned with all the talk we have about hospital overcrowding. Yes overcrowding for acute care management for COVID patients depletes the system. But for disabled patients, the system was ALREADY broken and overcrowded. 1/6
Lists to get in to see specialists in chronic illnesses and comorbidities are already endless for us. It's common to wait at least a year per specialist, and with an influx of millions of disabled individuals with long COVID, those wait times will get even higher. 2/6
Treatment options and research is currently being halted, delayed, or terminated in order for the system to focus on acute COVID-related demands. And so we have very few treatment options on the horizon. I was closely following so many clinical trials that just stopped. 3/6
Time-to-diagnosis is already so high for those of us with rare diseases and/or disabilities and/or chronic illnesses. And it's going to get even higher. Post-viral symptoms are so widespread and the system is already SO BAD at handling these patients. 4/6
So when we say we're trying to prevent hospital overcrowding let's be honest - we're trying to prevent ICU overcrowding. Preventing overcrowding should not be the only goal. That goal ignores the millions of disabled people without care right now. 5/6
Because the system will always shift resources to acute based therapies. And it will always shrug at the disabled lives sacrificed by those resource shifts. 6/6 #DisabilityTwitter #MedTwitter

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More from @Nicole_Lee_Sch

20 Dec
Got the classic "rare disease" line of questioning at my gyno today. Please for the love of God stop asking chronically ill patients who coordinates our care. No one does. No one. They just splice up our bodies piecemeal and send us to the next specialist. 1/4
When I had my "best" care I had a: geneticist, pain mgmt dr, cardiologist, neurologist, neurosurgeon, a GI, a GP, one orthopedist for each joint (which back then were hips, shoulders, hands), a bracing specialist, a PT team, and a gyno. 2/4
That's 13 drs. None of whom spoke to one another, coordinated care, or ensured their recommendations didn't clash with those of my other specialists. My GP just wrote numerous referrals but couldn't coordinate care bc they *were not trained to do so.* 3/4
Read 5 tweets
14 Dec
To everyone writing "sadly we couldnt convene" for whatever conference/program/lecture - please stop. Why are we not celebrating what we have achieved together? Why is there this overlay of remorse and regret? 1/4
I want to see "thank you everyone for attending our programming virtually this year. We:
- reduced our carbon costs by x
- made programming more accessible for caregivers, disabled individuals, parents, academics outside the academy, and the public
- decreased costs by x 2/4
- limited food waste
- increased our use of access tools like real time captioning
- recorded our work to increase accessibility and impact
- Created an archive that can sustain conversations
- saved our attendees x costs" 3/4
Read 5 tweets
28 Nov
To everyone jumping to "omicron doesn't seem to be that bad." At least a quarter of the worlds population is disabled. For us, the original variant was bad, Delta was bad, and now yes Omicron is going to be bad too. 1/4
I'm so tired of non-disabled people being like "don't be scared keep doing things as normal." Before omicron I needed the govt to have a mask mandate. I needed better quarantine rules. I needed better contact tracing. Now I definitely need all that but likely won't get it. 2/4
This is just another example of non-disabled people going "I can't handle taking the measures other people need me to take, but fuck it because even if I get sick it shouldn't be that bad, so I can go about as normal." 3/4
Read 4 tweets
11 Nov
When people critique self-diagnosis as a valid practice they misunderstand the relationship between medicine, diagnostics, and medical training. As a historian of medicine this is endlessly frustrating to me. So here's a thread on the history of diagnostics. 1/22
Until the early 19th century turn to empirical training, which took off in France, diagnostics didn't actually matter all that much. Doctors generally claimed that their patients were sick from imbalanced humors (black bike, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm). 2/22
Some claimed that patients were sick bc of an imbalance between the body's liquid and solid parts (known as solidism), others claimed imbalances from nervous excitement, but on the whole the idea was that an imbalance was happening and needed to be remedied. 3/22
Read 22 tweets
23 Sep
If you're an undergrad and you've never been to office hours please please please just go. Just go. Tomorrow. Book a meeting online with your prof or show up. You don't need to be struggling to go. And if you're struggling you should definitely go. 1/8
It might seem super intimidating, but it doesn't have to be. And it's time that YOU are already paying for. It's your time to come get help, to talk about career plans, or to ask any questions you might have about my profession. Here's what usually happens in office hours: 2/8
Scenario 1: A student comes in and admits they're struggling with a class concept - we strategize about how to solve the problem. And they leave my office with an email full of resources they can use to work on the issue they're having in class. 3/8
Read 8 tweets
17 Sep
I was only able to move to my postdoc because I lived with my parents, rent free, for the past year. Having a job lined up in April didn't help me get through the summer, having a home did. I worked a side job all summer but still wouldn't have been able to make rent 1/10
And medical costs. Instead, living at home allowed me to pay off about 10K in undergrad loans. And it allowed me to pay for my medical costs, which under student health cap at 11K a year. 2/10
Over the summer I had to buy secondary health insurance to cover a two week gap btw plans - two weeks cost $400. Bc you can't buy short term insurance if you're disabled, and you have to buy a full month of coverage. 3/10
Read 10 tweets

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