I became disabled in my late 20s, but stayed in the workforce until my early 40s, sticking it out as long as I could.
When I’d run out of sick time, sometimes I’d just have to leave a job and recover, until I could work again. This was rough on my pocketbook & my resume.
When I finally applied for disability, it was because I was sick of this farce of being asked to perform exactly as if I did not have a disability WHEN I DID.
Employers weren’t that great at accommodation & sometimes caused problems for me (and other employees) because they were too miserly to invest in ergonomics.
For the last couple weeks, I’ve been in the midst of a bad disability flareup. If the SSDI that I worked for & paid into paid enough to not put me at risk of homelessness, I could avoid many of the things that cause flareups.
I could rest when I needed to rest.
But because it doesn’t, and because poor people and disabled people are targets for the GOP, I returned to school to see if there were some kind of accommodated work I could train for that pays enough even if I can only do it PT.
And because school is approached much the same way work is, I also can’t rest when I need to. I also get subjected to things that flare me up, particularly stress over rather stupid ways of assessing whether someone learned material.
And I was thinking of this today as I’m in a lot of pain. I couldn’t focus enough to catch up on my reading this weekend. It’s demanding reading & I’m in a lot of pain.
But school doesn’t care that I’m in pain. It only cares that I turn in work on such-and-such date. It cares that I sit for a test at such-and-such time. #DisabledAndSTEM
This isn’t just a disability issue, of course. Abled people who get bacterial or viral infections & feel awful are also expected to perform as if they were 100%, unless they’re at death’s door. #DisabledAndSTEM
This is a crazy way to run workplaces & schools. Why does our culture insist people must suffer to prove they’re “hard working”? Why don’t enough of us band together to change this? #DisabledAndSTEM
Due to extreme crises on several fronts, people are thinking about more radical changes & restructuring than they have since probably the ‘60s.
We should add this to the pile. We should be treating ourselves, our co-workers, our employees, our students, our faculty better than we do.
We should give our bodies & minds the time they need to maintain health. We should give them the time they need when they need to repair. #DisabledAndSTEM
We inherit our culture, but we also form it. I hope we have the imagination and bravery to re-form our culture around what maintains human health rather than what a bare majority of humans can kinda sorta get along with. #DisabledAndSTEM
