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Am I Disabled?

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Re: Am I Disabled?

#41

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

igetspam wrote: post #5
uberman wrote: post #3

I've personally pondered this a number of times and here is my conclusion that I am comfortable with. While there is some sense of continuum, there is a difference between being hurt and being injured. In a similar sense I feel there is a continuum of "something" and disabled. I don't really know what to call the "something" end of the disability continuum that would be analogous to "hurt" rather then "injured". For…

My wife appears to be incredibly fit and she is. She's able bodied, thin but not sickly so and strong. She has great muscle definition. Her skin looks healthy. She is often taken for being a decade or more younger than she actually is. She spends half her week pleading with medical staff or arguing with insurance about why the drugs and procedures shouldn't be denied. Her eyesight is rapidly degenerating. She's has d…

That sounds awful. My wife has Stills and went through a similar experience before getting a diagnosis. Has she been seen by a rheumatologist? Her symptoms seem vaguely auto-immune/inflammatory.

https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/reactive-arthritis/

Re: Am I Disabled?

#42

Post by MacsHeadroom »

himujjal wrote: post #38

Why does the first world have the smallest of problems? Everytime i open social media someone has some disease I have never heard of but when googled has the same symptoms of a basic cough. lol. You should come to India. People here are quite chilled out when it comes to physical or mental problems. They dont see a form and go well. This hurts my feelings

Sounds like you misunderstood the point of the article. Not surprising, since it's written as a cryptic poem.

The question is meant more as a metaphor for a larger problem american culture (in particular) has with lumping a lot of very different things together as "disabilities" and the problems that stem from doing that.

Like the author said, if a (public) building is physically inaccessible by a significant subset of the population then the building design is the thing that needs attention and reconsideration not the people.

In other words, we should put more effort into designing systems and things that accommodate differences rather than asking people to identify with the poorly defined and highly contextual term "disabled" as if that's a solution to anything.

That's closer to the point of the article, despite going over and over the question for the sake of poetry.

Re: Am I Disabled?

#43

Post by redis_mlc »

ycombinete wrote: post #37
redis_mlc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to break it to a teen with epilepsy whose goal in life was to be a pilot, "The FAA medical will reject you, but maybe you can work in an FBO or other aviation business." (He wasn't interested in flying a desk.) In aviation, anything related to loss of consciousness (LoC) is automatically disqualifying. You can get a special issuance for most other health problems (cancer, high blood pressure, sometimes diabetes…

This doesn’t surprise me. I’m not epileptic, but one night under strobes at a club I had a full on tonic-clonic seizure. I hadn’t been drinking, or taken any hard drugs, but I had been consuming a lot of caffeine syrups to study at university that week. Caffeine is a hell of a drug!

I haven't heard of caffeine triggering epilepsy, but yup, here's a link:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29414557/

Good to know. It wasn't reported that the Florida pilot had a seizure, but he too was too jacked up to concentrate on flying. Had it been a seizure, it would be tough get an aviation medical renewed because it can't be proved that LoC won't happen again.

Fatigue Countermeasures in Aviation (Mountain Dew Highest Caffeine Content)

https://www.asma.org/asma/media/asma/pdf-policy/2009/fatigue...

Re: Am I Disabled?

#44

Post by AussieWog93 »

himujjal wrote: post #38

Why does the first world have the smallest of problems? Everytime i open social media someone has some disease I have never heard of but when googled has the same symptoms of a basic cough. lol. You should come to India. People here are quite chilled out when it comes to physical or mental problems. They dont see a form and go well. This hurts my feelings

Anyone who claims that Indian people don't make big issues out of small problems has never been stuck behind one in a queue.

Re: Am I Disabled?

#45

Post by mclam »

edgyquant wrote: post #36
kayodelycaon wrote: post #11

I think this is a pretty good writeup on how disabilities are dealt with in society. For myself, I'm bipolar. I've had significant difficult my entire life but I didn't know why until recently. Being bipolar has a severe impact on every aspect of my life. In relation to work, it's just painful. I need accommodations to handle a 40-hour work week. I need a regular schedule. I can't be on-call during the night because…

I also deal with bipolar but I actually attribute being able to work in startups to it. I mostly have up days so I can go 10 hours without losing interest a week and a half at a time. But this comes with the downside of having a handful of days a month where I legit couldn’t churn out a couple hours worth of work no matter how hard I try. Luckily the places I’ve worked don’t care too much as I can make up for it the…

Your first sentence I resonated with. I think it can still work in the right circumstance.

Think I've burnt out though. Not just of programming.

It's kind of comforting to see BP on HN more so these days. Usually it feels lonely because people diagnosed I know aren't programmers.

For me, I think it has gotten worse with age and presents new struggles.

In regards to the article. I don't respond, or I mark no. It never seems worth it to announce it.

Re: Am I Disabled?

#46

Post by taxicabjesus »

I don't identify with being disabled, but I have to be careful to keep my nerves from flaring up. For me there's a fine line between 'somewhat functional' and 'invalid'.

Two years ago, on a submission titled "Laziness Does Not Exist but unseen barriers do", one of you all used the term "invisible disabilities" [0]. I found this to be descriptive of what I've experienced since I knocked myself out at the lake when I was 17 years old. From my reply to [0], "I used to think I mostly recovered from that head injury, but I've recently realized that it left me rather non-functional. I'm making progress, but I guess I'm 'invisibly disabled', in certain ways."

In the beginning I went to some doctors trying to figure out my nerve condition. One of the tragedies of modern medicine [1] is how sometimes doctors diagnose their patient and treat the diagnosis, instead of looking deeper for causes behind the patient's symptoms. Such is the essential nature of a 10-minute office visit. I did get a helpful idea recently -- a PA suggested my one symptom indicated 'allergies'. My subsequent searches turned up better treatments than the medications I was prescribed.

Recently I made a disability-act complaint with the state attorney general's office about being discriminated against by a business. The main thing was they didn't realize they did anything wrong, and I'm not the only person getting discriminated against in that specific way. I figured that by making the complaint I was also helping others who are similarly 'invisibly disabled', much worse than I am, who aren't capable of figuring out how to stand up for themselves against societal idiocy. The state Attorney General's office was swamped with similar complaints. It was 1.5 months before my intake interview. I don't know how many complaints they decide to go with, but I had my story and documentation in order and the AG's office agreed to file charges on my behalf. I bet the business won't even remember me.

tl/dr: many people have chronic conditions. Sometimes people can recover, sometimes they won't, but I think it important to help people maintain 'hope' that they can do something to improve their situation, or find some insight into their predicament that provides a silver lining. Christopher Reeves' [2] comes to mind. Two quotes:

"When we have hope, we discover powers within ourselves we may have never known- the power to make sacrifices, to endure, to heal, and to love. Once we choose hope, everything is possible."

"You play the hand you’re dealt. I think the game’s worthwhile."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17721273

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25355990

[2] actor who played Superman (1978) & became a quadriplegic in 1995 after falling off a horse...

Re: Am I Disabled?

#47

Post by Scaless »

notsureifdis wrote: post #31

I have a history of depression and ADHD, and I take (two different) meds for them and regular therapy for the depression. I’m also looking for jobs right now and I see this voluntary self-identification question all the time. It states it won’t hurt me, and I think it usually mentions they want to know so that they can report that they hire x% of people with disabilities. So far I’ve always answered “no” because I fe…

In a proper system this is something that should be self-reported and not handled by the employer. An example:

$Employer gives you a form to fill out with your disabilities and their Employer ID#. You fill out the form (if you get hired) and send it to $GovernmentAgency yourself. $Employer lets $GovernmentAgency know that they hired you. $GovernmentAgency gives a quarterly statement to $Employer without any specific information tied to individuals.

Same thing with race, sex, age, and all the other affirmative action qualifiers. These are really things that employers should not know or care about in the hiring process.

As it is, don't feel bad about lying on the forms with stuff like this. The system is rigged against you, don't give them any more ground if you don't have to.

Re: Am I Disabled?

#48

Post by rvp-x »

edgyquant wrote: post #36
kayodelycaon wrote: post #11

I think this is a pretty good writeup on how disabilities are dealt with in society. For myself, I'm bipolar. I've had significant difficult my entire life but I didn't know why until recently. Being bipolar has a severe impact on every aspect of my life. In relation to work, it's just painful. I need accommodations to handle a 40-hour work week. I need a regular schedule. I can't be on-call during the night because…

I also deal with bipolar but I actually attribute being able to work in startups to it. I mostly have up days so I can go 10 hours without losing interest a week and a half at a time. But this comes with the downside of having a handful of days a month where I legit couldn’t churn out a couple hours worth of work no matter how hard I try. Luckily the places I’ve worked don’t care too much as I can make up for it the…

this sounds really bad for you :( there's nothing wrong with not being productive sometimes. you shouldn't need like you need to "catch up" by doing insane amounts of work.

This mentality totally screwed me over during university, and I feel like a lot of my mental stability right now comes from how my job place has guilt-free discussions about what we can finish in the remainder of the time until the deadline, without "oh we'll just work harder".

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