Physically Disabled - Tumblr Posts - Page 2

Trying to be a uni student while disabled is like pulling teeth. Even with a reduced course load, I can't even manage to go to my classes on Fridays because I'm just completely wiped out. The majority of it is because I'm in fucking pain all the time and I can't focus

When I say that the medical system is failing me, your response shouldn't be "Google your symptoms" or "Only you can help yourself" because neither of those things are remotely helpful. Instead, treat those failed with by the system with empathy and get fucking mad over the injustice.

My back hurts from sitting, and my legs hurt from standing. And I didn't get a call back about my x-ray *jumps into the sun*

Good news: calf muscles r growing back!

Bad news: ow

the world of disability is often one of absolute loneliness and destroying sadness. this loneliness and sadness is not from the hands of the disabled, but rather the abled. we, as the disabled, blur the lines of their understandings of joy, experience, and self -- they cannot imagine being disabled and the struggle accompanied with it until they become disabled themselves, as they all will. in the meantime, we must find meaning and joy within our communities because it is difficult to find belonging elsewhere.

Chronic pain is so ridiculous because I can do a little jog to catch the streetcar at 12pm and still be in pain about it 9 hours later

Chronic pain is so ridiculous because I can do a little jog to catch the streetcar at 12pm and still be in pain about it 9 hours later

In honour of it being around 1 year since my health declined and I became physically disabled, I wanted to share my recent calls which is a great summary of my life (alt text available)

Who was I before my disability? Was I happier? When I look at photos of myself, am I only my disability? When I look in the mirror, who do I see?

There is a lot of loss with the formation or the realization of disability. Loss of opportunity, resources, friendships, sense of self. All of this loss is tactical, of course, by the institutions that constantly try to shove disabled people out of their spaces, and intentional by society to isolate disabled people.

The lack of support, solidarity, allyship, results in the loss of self. When we are seen only for our disability, that is all we see in ourselves. All we see is that loss.

However, disability isn't all loss. It's painful and, more often than not, it sucks. But we cannot allow ourselves to define our disability as solely loss. There is more than that.

It's just a matter of finding it.

After about 16 months of constant pain, I finally got a diagnosis. Turns out, I have long COVID. The nurse said the symptoms overlap with fibro, so I've been put on an anti-inflammitory.

I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this. Experimental drug trials are the only other medical options I have.

Time to start wearing a mask again.

Ok so at this point I've had two people roll up to me in manual wheelchairs, well, one of them was somebody pushing somebody who was nonverbal at the time, but it still counts. They asked me why I had zip ties around my tires.

It's winter where I'm living and we have really bad snow. And the snow plow people are really bad at their jobs probably because there aren't snow plow people who clean sidewalks. As a solution I got to thinking about how I could increase the traction on my wheels. And the most redneck thing I could think of was taking a bunch of zip ties and tying them around my wheels. They last surprisingly long, and work surprisingly well. It's basically the same premise as chains for your tires during the winter.

I chose to space them out pretty evenly so there's about one for every spoke. You could probably do more or less depending on how many you want and how much traction you get but I wouldn't go more than three per spoke. I realize that it's a bit later in the winter, and I probably should have made a post about this sooner, but I came up with it about a week ago. So please share this, even if you're not disabled, because there are tons of people I know who are stuck in their houses because they can't get around in the snow. A pack of zip ties costs about $5, which compared to $200 knobby snow tires is a big save, and if you want to invest you could get colored zip ties.