A friend of mine was recently acosted by a nasty man at a golf course who wanted to know what was so special about her that she needed a golf cart. She has RA, and was in pain from walking the first nine to watch her son in a tournament and knew that to continue she needed the cart.
No one should be treated like this, it makes me wanna scream!
We were discussing in my email loop what a good comeback would be.
My suggestion is this, "Just because my disability is invisible to you doesn't make it, or my pain, any less real."
With RA, Lupus, MS, Fibro, or any of the other chronic pain and inflammation type diseases, often the problem is somewhat invisible! It is horrible to be subjected to the attitudes of people who think you are just trying to "put one over" on the healthy people of the world. They should have to walk in our painful shoes for a while and see what it is like.
If you have a "visible" source of disability no one would ever dare question you. But often heart conditions and cancer can be invisible too. Turning to someone and saying you have those shuts people up quick.
However, 9 out of 10 people hear RA and say - "Oh, I have arthritis too." People don't get it...they don't get that it is different. I almost always state my Lupus first and then the RA just so people have a better idea. Most don't get lupus either but they have heard "it's bad." Cracks me up.
Ahhh well, just needed to ramble a bit. Last nite I went to bed at 8pm and slept today until 10:30am. Of course, I was up and down an little with kid stuff, but it was much better and kind of made up for the nights of missed sleep with dd8.
Be well!
4 comments:
you are absolutely right carpe i am a 23 yr. old female with RA and when i tell people that i have it they look at me as if i'm too young to have RA, i say that because when i started feeling pain in certain spots of my body i went to the doctor and told them what kind of pain i was experiencing and they just looked at me as if i was out of my mind, i continued to feel the pain so i went to another doctor about a year later and they sent me for blood work and the number was very very high saying that i have RA ,and as i look back and said if that other doctor went a little further to see why i was feeling the way i was maybe they could have detected it much early.
yeah i have sickle cell no one knows at school why i am gone so much. but i tell them case something goes wrong with me :) some men are shallow.
Thanks for commenting! I know this is something a lot of people can relate too.
It sucks doesn't it???
Be well and good luck!!!
Oh my gosh! I had a horrible woman yell at me in a public bathroom awhile back because I used the handicap stall. She told me that those types of stalls are for people with disabilities. I said, "FYI, not that it's any of your business, I have several illnesses that you cannot see and most likely will not understand but I need the rails to help me stand back up off the toilet." I walked out of the room without even washing my hands I was so upset. Of course, it pissed DH off because he can't understand how it was her business to question me in the first place.
Some people...
Hugs,
Susan
Post a Comment