A forty year old man with children was just kicked off disability in the UK because he was told that he could work a job. There was a picture of the man who had a leg amputated due to an injury twelve years ago.
The comments section was full of those on the attack!
I know someone with no legs and he climbed a mountain!
He could work as a cashier!! He can sit on a stool for eight hours!Those were some of the ones the nicer comments.
Even though the article mentioned several times that the man was dyslexic and could not read, many overlooked it and went on to bash him.
Nowadays, the UK and the US are looking for ways to reduce benefits to the disabled.
To tell someone that they can get a job on one hand and turn around and not hire them with the other is dishonest.
God forbid, you roll your behind into a job interview with wheelchair in tow, chances are your prospective employer is thinking a few things.
1. This guy is going to cost us a fortune in health care expenses.
2. I’m going to have to make a lot of “accommodations” just so this guy can get in the freaking door! How much is that going to cost me again?
3. This person is not reliable! They will have chronic health issues and call off work all the time. What could I do with a person like that? I can just hire an able bodied person and get rid of the headache!
So what is the disabled person to do? The Social Security Administration is telling this person that they can work, yet no one will hire them because they are a “liability” to the company. The few jobs that may extend employment won’t pay anything worth for that person to live on! If you make a dollar over a certain amount, you risk losing Medicaid! What is a person in this situation to do?
Joe Kline wrote an article in TIME magazine about how many poor people in this country are going around the welfare requirements to work by applying for disability. As if applying for disability is so much easier….anyway….he was stating in the article that all of these people with backaches are applying for disability and are granted even when statistics show that 1/3 of people who apply in the US are granted it. But when they get denied they continue applying and eventually get it. Of course he had no sources cited to back that absurd claim up.
Are there people out there scamming the system? Hell yes! There are people who need it and aren’t getting it and those that don’t that are. But that happens in EVERY SYSTEM where someone will take advantage. The answer is NOT to just throw everyone off to save a few bucks.
The lifetime benefit for a person on disability in the US is $300,000. That adds up to a lot of money in the long run but what is the best way to go about this?
Kick a bunch of people off and tell them to make their own way? This happened before in this country and was rectified in recent years. Makes you wonder what POOR people did before this. I’m sure many of them died destitute and homeless, unable to take care of themselves.
Special rights?
So now as a morally bankrupt legislative body look for ways to cut the budget, where else will they turn? To a group of people that are already marginalized and discriminated against to save a few dollars.
Pick on the disabled. They can work! Well my knee hurts every morning but I get up and go to work every morning. I don’t want a handout! What about that Joe guy that’s in the wheelchair across the street? Yeah, he plays wheelchair basketball! You know the inspirational ones! Not the ones who sit at home and rag on how disabled and unhappy they are! Geesh!!! (sarcasm for those who don’t get it.)
I worked since I was ten years old and never had an issue doing it. I never even thought NOT to work because this was the only way to provide. I never look for handouts or make excuses but sometimes life just happens.
To those of you that moan and groan about my special parking space, be careful when you get behind the wheel this week. Lots of people with spinal cord injuries had accidents…some behind the wheel. Many from the carelessness and recklessness of others. You never know where life may lead you. You could be looking at your own wheelchair or walker some day due to a chronic illness like myself. I woke up one morning and hit the ground. That was the day the doctor ordered my first wheelchair and told me, “So when are you going to apply for disability?” This was at a time when I was ACTIVELY trying to prove to my job that I still had what it took to do my job. Screw a disability check, put me back on the bus to provide for my child! That was the thought going through my head, not “Oh lucky me! I get to lie on my back and collect a check!”
I don’t wish this life on anyone but it happened to me. If someone said that I would be in a wheelchair three years ago, I probably would have cursed them out. I didn’t have time to be disabled and I know that comment doesn’t make sense.
As an able bodied person, you don’t really live your life thinking about disability until it happens to you. But if it does, you expect that society reach out and make the playing field level, not expecting special treatment. You just want things to be equal. You don’t expect a bunch of people who know nothing about disability, except for what they think they know on television, to start telling you that you’re not disabled nor do you deserve the same rights that they have.
It’s madness. It makes no sense.
Better solutions are needed along with compassion and understanding. The situation will get worse until we start speaking up and speaking out agains the Joe Klines’ and others.
My PCP quit.
Mom said her friend had apparently said that they were trying to drive me away on purpose so they could dump me as a patient because I’m so untreatable and that is why he went from being actually helpful to suddenly not wanting to treat me at all but ha Ha HA ha.
Keeping in mind that I have done EVERYTHING all the doctors have said. I have tried all their dangerous medicines I have tried PT I agreed to go to the damn therapist I have NEVER argued until the bullshit last appointment where my diagnosis were pulled.
So basically this is the extent doctors will go to to not have to treat me. SERIOUSLY.
Whatever I was going to replace him anyway.
o man lots of reblogreplies to post i will just do all at once
I’ve had this problem while being in some of the RSD/CRPS-specific forums. While getting better (remission) was an option for some people, I found the focus on it to actually be really depressing.
Your life right now, is what it is. It’s possible it might change in the future. But it’s also possible that it won’t. And I personally don’t believe in getting hopes up for a cure or recovery because that could be so far down the road that there’s no point in stopping your life.
I know people are giving you grief about getting a wheelchair. If you can get through to them, explain to them that you are not giving up, but that you want to live your life the best as possible and also that you want to be prepared for the future.
You are who you are and your life is what it is. And it’s up to you to decide how to deal with it. Not anyone else. Not any doctor. Not any family member. It’s your body. Your life. Your decisions.
The nice thing about the EM specific support group is everyone is old because the average onset age is like 65. No one is told “oh you will get better!!!111” when elderly so no one has that mindset. There is also basically no remission so yeah. I think like one person got better but they were in a coma for a few months so THE CURE IS COMA SOMEONE KNOCK ME OUT.
I think the biggest problem is the fact that everyone is so set on “you will get better” that they are unwilling to help me prepare for when I DON’T. Like I have been mostly stuck in my bed for 2 years and for those 2 years I have been telling mom we need to start with the applying for disability shit because at this point i honestly do not see myself ever being able to work a job that can support me but she keeps acting like this is negative thinking until like the last couple months so I have lost 2 years of time on this and could have been far along by now ulgh.
Follow me! I’m a black hole of endless bodily disintegration! :-D
For real though, I can’t handle that sort of approach. Like, positivity has its place, indisputably, but it doesn’t belong as a shield against reality, that just makes everything hurt worse. And it certainly shouldn’t be used to make those of us battling downward spirals feel like we’re failing because we can’t have sunny dispositions. We’ve got enough on our plates just trying to keep moving forward.
Yeah this shit is pushing me backwards because the doctors are thinking this way the people supposed to be helping me are thinking this way so when I want to prepare for the worst I am told I am paranoid and need therapy.
IT IS NOT PARANOIA
WHEN I BASE EVERYTHING ON STATISTICS FACTS AND EXPERIENCES
AND I HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY CORRECT ABOUT EVERYTHING LIKE 80% OF THE TIME.
I am getting real tired of having to repeat i told you so so much
Hey you! You’re welcome to follow me. I made a similar rant when I first got here. I followed every chronic person I could find, and then recoiled in horror at my dash. I mashed that unfollow button so fucking hard…
Anyway, here was my original reaction to it. It’s probably mild compared to if I were to make such a post now:
http://not-that-kind-of-chronic.tumblr.com/post/43833728742/is-it-just-me
I’d like to say I’m a realist not bitter, but sometimes reality IS bitter fucking pill.
SOOOoooOOOoo, yeah, I don’t sugar coat things, I curse like a foul mouthed sailor after 6 shots of whisky and my blog is a general chronic illness blog with some civil rights sprinkles. Feel free to commiserate.
Yeah i mostly get that in the tag now because I unfollowed the people who had blogs of that
I guess it helps some people but ?? i do not understand
being strong isn’t all that helpful when someone else has control of the difficulty level and only knows how to turn it UP.
Maybe they have things they can actually fix idk
There’s always so much that starts with “oh but you might…” or “oh but you could…” and “what if…”
What about the now? What about the I need the wheelchair right now. What about the I want to get on with my life because I can’t afford to put it on pause.
Yeah I do not understand how this is a reaction to things that could help me. I am not asking to chop my feet off I am asking for a chair to get around. If I go on disability and magically become healthy I am pretty sure they simply kick you off. None of these things can’t be undone later but the clock ticking away as I spend my life in bed waiting for things can never be taken back.
I have an accuweather widget thing so i can tell if it is actually hot out or i am just having a flare and sometimes i look at the site for hour forecast and
wait
what is this
“migraine”
HOW LONG HAS THERE BEEN A MIGRAINE WEATHER CALCULATOR ON THIS SITE FUCK
OH MY GOD IT DOES JOINT PAIN TOO AND SINUS PAIN AND BREATHING HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN HERE
I am a bitter person and have issues following a lot of chronic illness/disability blogs because they try to be positive and cheering other people up.
It just makes me feel worse. Because they all seem to be all “fight this pain it will end eventually”. And then it will come back… probably worse too. It doesn’t get better.
It’s not me being pessimistic when I say that when it is based on the fact there is no evidence I will get better ever and plenty that I will get worse.
Why don’t I think I am getting better? In summery my condition is getting worse, the way I am being treated is getting worse (both in having medical treatments and how doctors treat me as a person), and I am running out of things to try to get better.
Under this circumstance I think assuming I will get not only better, but DRASTICALLY better, which is what my mom and most of the doctors seem to be acting is what i should think, is just stupid.
There is no drastic better.
I have always been sick I will never not be sick.
When I am told I shouldn’t get a wheelchair because what if I get better I think about almost crying on my retail shifts as a teenager because it hurt so bad to stand. When I am told I will get better I think of when I had to make the conscious choice as a preteen to give up spending time with friends because I barely had energy to do my homework. I think of being a little kid kept up by my feet and dunking them in a tub of cold water I kept next to the bed.
And that is why I don’t have plans on getting “better” and make them instead for “worse”. Because there is no “healthy” to return to and trying to be ok when I clearly wasn’t has only made my life harder.
when you limp yourself downstairs to obtain medicine to take soon, get water to take pills with from fridge, go upstairs…
and realize you never grabbed the pills and only brought up the water
FFFFFFFFF
/limps back downstairs to try again
My PCP spoke to the neurologists
They have decided I do not have Erythromelagia
They still refuse to do any sort of neurological test more than bonk on the leg with a tuning fork kind
They have decided that I have fibro instead.
Let me remind you one of these neurologist has been quoted saying “fibromyalgia is what doctors say when they don’t know what is wrong and want to give up”
So they give up
I no longer have a primary diagnoisis
I have been told I will never be given anything stronger than percocet (and seemed to imply that I won’t be getting more ever) because “narcotics make fibromyalgia worse” (since when?!)
They are only recommending therapy and antidepressants. Fuck all of you.
this duck
i am going to keep posting this duck until the world understands “coping” and “better” are not the same thing.
Someone should make a meme out of this duck
yes coping duck good
My young age does not negate the fact that I am in pain literally every second of every day. My young age should not mean that I am denied the medications I need to be comfortable.
Diseases do not care that you are young, they will not be easier on you because of your age.
I am not drug-seeking. My pain is real. I am just trying to live my life.
so I have been trying to be a Good Patient™ who doesn’t argue with the doctors and waits for them to suggest things instead of asking myself for specific things and damaging their fragile egos.
This isn’t working. I have been obediently playing along with the doctors and waiting patiently for too long. It’s been 2 years of being mostly bedridden from my plethora of symptoms and I am being met constantly with shrugged shoulders and being told to find a new doctor.
So I am asking YOU tumblrs sick and disabled population to help. My new PCP is a newbie so he ACTUALLY TAKES SUGGESTIONS OMG. Most of the sick people I know have been though enough medical crap to have learned a lot of shit so I want to know what YOU think.
What I want to know:
Tests I should have.
Most of my doctors have just looked at me and decided what was wrong. I have had almost NO tests except for blood tests, a couple of ER visit tests (chest xray and ECG) and GI tests like colon/endoscopy. If you have xyz symptoms and I have xyz symptoms and they gave you __ tests it would be cool if you could tell me
Treatments I should ask about.
Weirder the better. I react pretty bad to medication so anything not a pill would be extra good. Alternatively if something is the worst treatment ever and you would like to inform me of this that would be great
Any advice would be super helpful because I need to know what I can do
BUT WAIT I am desperate for help. How desperate?
I WILL MAKE EVERYONE WHO CAN SUGGEST A NEW TREATMENT/TEST FOR ME TO TRY A DOODLE.
my symptom summery/current dx list is under this cut for space
WELL I FIGURED OUT WHY THE MUSCLE RELAXER WAS MAKING ME DIZZY
my blood pressure is like 75/45 uh oh
that is in oops fainting territory
the sick thing was it was really helping me sleep which is rare most sleep aids do nothing for me
well either way, another failure in trying to medicate me
