#disability adjustment

[ceilidhtransing]

It never escapes my notice, as a glasses-wearer who is severely impaired without them, that the kind of people who come out of the woodwork to tell people who take medication, use disability aids, etc "are you sure you want to be dependent on drugs / aids / whatever for the rest of your life?" never come for people who need glasses.

I need glasses to live, and I know that I will probably be dependent on glasses for the rest of my life. It's a debated topic whether "terrible eyesight that's easily corrected with glasses" counts as a Disability™ or not, but I know that I am very disabled without glasses and I'm just as dependent on them to go about my life as, say, someone completely paralysed from the waist down is dependent on a wheelchair. Yet the weird ableist attitude about how "awful" and "life-ruining" it is to be "dependent on something" doesn't rear its head for glasses-wearers.

And this attitude always baffles me because not only is it not actually a shameful disaster to be "dependent on something for the rest of your life", as it's so often presented in abled society, but also because if you need something in order to live your life - a cane, a daily dose of medication, an accessibility adjustment, a hearing aid, a pair of glasses, or anything else - then you need it, and whether it would somehow be "preferable" not to be "dependent on that for the rest of your life" is a completely irrelevant question. That's not a choice you can make. "I had to choose between being dependent on glasses for the rest of my life, or simply Getting Good and not being shortsighted anymore" - like, what?????

If you need something for your disability, then whether you'd "rather not be dependent on it" is not the choice abled people seem to think it is. Hand-wringing about "but wouldn't you rather not be dependent on that?" [undertone: "shouldn't you be trying harder to not need that"] is completely tangential to the point: because if you need something, then either you have access to the thing that allows you to live a full(er) life, or you are denied access to that thing, but whether you have it or not you're still going to need it.

And if abled people are able (...no pun intended) to not be weird about people who will be dependent on glasses for the rest of their lives, they can sure as hell not be weird about people who are dependent on medication, aids, adjustments, or whatever else.

[neuroticboyfriend]

honestly sitting here ready to cry learning that Luigi Mangione (The Adjuster) had a spine condition at L5-S1. for him it led to a spinal fusion surgery.

i have a mystery illness at L5-S1. i know the pain that comes there. nothing is ever comfortable. it hurts so fucking badly, and any non-opioid medication can't make it bearable.

i have a medicaid managed care plan, which only very few doctors take. let alone good doctors. i've been struggling for 5 years trying to figure out whats wrong. i see doctors for 5 mins, they tell me there's nothing they can do for me, they don't know what's wrong, say it's anxiety, or my weight, etc.

this man. this man knows my pain. maybe not with the same details, but the story is the same. chronic low back pain in a fucking broken medical system.

i can't even put into words the emotions i have about this. it's evident that Luigi Mangione is such an intelligent individual, and the fact he was driven to this point, instead of being able to live a happy, safe, fulling life - god. it's a crime.

we all deserve better than this. fuck the ruling class.

[charleslee-valentine]

Trudy refills Vincent’s cereal. He’s 2-3 years old and blind in one eye. He doesn’t need more cereal, he just needs his bowl rotated so he can see the cereal that was left over on his blind side. Not that we necessarily know how Vincent communicates without speech, but she hardly gives him time to answer her question about more before she’s refilling the bowl anyways. This is her approach to parenting her boys in general.

There’s no interest in fixing their actual issues. Rather than help Vincent to see what he already has in front of him, she’d rather add more, inadvertently also adding more onto the side he can’t see. At some point, this would just add to the issue. Overcompensation into overwhelm. Bo is brought in for breakfast kicking and screaming and it’s sort of evident why Trudy puts all her love into Vincent to the point of it being suffocating and unhelpful. Sure it could be a simple case of favoritism, but with the aspect of overcompensation specifically, it seems that she wants to balance her guilt over failing to parent one of her sons by pouring more effort than necessary into Vincent. Rather than giving the extra attention to Bo, it’s refilling a non-empty bowl of cereal.

I don’t think that necessarily mean she loves Vincent more. She finds him easier to parent. Fill the bowl whether or not he needs it because that’s easier than unpacking where Bo’s massive emotional outbursts are coming from. It seems more like love-bombing than genuine kindness. He’s “being such a good boy today,” but the implied part is an unsaid comparison to Bo. As twins, and conjoined twins at that, they’re not independent of each other. Vincent’s behavior exists only to contrast Bo’s, from her perspective. “Fix” his needs, and she can fix them both. Hence, preferring just to duct tape Bo to a chair than help him any.

Then Vincent grows up to become her protege, starting in his childhood but lasting until even after Trudy’s death. Over thirty years have passed since they were toddlers in those high chairs, but Bo gives a hint about why Vince got that ‘special privilege’ to not be as physically abused. “She always said that your talent would make up for what God took away from you.” Only, God didn’t take anything. Victor Sinclair doing illegal, unqualified surgery on his babies is why Vincent lost half of his face. Trudy only uses God’s name and religion as a shield for her own guilt about how her boys turned out. But it’s more likely she included Vincent in the wax business because she again, was dumping affection onto him over and over as her strategy.

Otherwise there isn’t as much favoritism between the boys. In their childhood photos, they both play piano, both play pool and baseball, both get to sit at the table with their birthday cake (without highchairs or bindings) and they play on the floor together. It's not entirely divisive between them, though it’s still obvious from which brother she’s slapping across his face and which brother she’s love-bombing which she’d prefer to deal with. Just not which she actually cares for more. Vincent wasn’t somehow spared from abuse in a house like the Sinclair household.

Interestingly, when Bo tells the story of Trudy and Victor, he mentions that once the Doc died, they were alone. Except, there’s at least one version of a prop newspaper stating that Trudy created a wax memorial for Victor. So this is just a false version of events most likely. Sure it could be that a decision changed, but there’s also the fact that, in the guns and ammo store, there’s a sign that says “Trudy’s Town or Wax.” And Bo tells Vincent, “We almost finished what mama started.” She’s also much older than the Trudy we see in the family photos and articles (even with the amount of cigarettes that woman smoked.) Ambrose is confirmed to have been abandoned for a decade, but to be turned into wax, Trudy would’ve had to die sometime between the abandonment of Ambrose and the present. Else she would’ve been properly buried most likely. The plan to fill Ambrose was hers, it’s just Bo that suggests using real humans (according to his apology to Vincent, he takes credit for the idea anyhow.)

Which makes her boys at least in their mid twenties when she died. In an older version of the script, Bo had killed her and Victor, but knowing it would put them all in foster care, that doesn’t quite make sense unless they were older. So the order of events is, Doc dying, the sugar mill closing, Trudy planning to reimagine Ambrose, and then dying herself.

The reason that’s important is because it’s emblematic of just how much pressure she was putting on both of her boys. And that’s not love. With two mentally ill, abused sons, (maybe three, since Lord only knows how they treated Lester once he came along,) that’s just manipulation. Victor and Trudy aren’t cartoon super villains for being bad to their boys. But when you can’t even just rotate a bowl slightly for your half blind little one, it’s shallow. Trudy has her cigarettes right in the boys faces in the opening and in most of the photos. Smoking was in one study linked to about 1/3rd of conjoined pregnancies, and in a similar case of conjoinment to the boys, one of the twins had lost an eye and had a prosthetic, but with minimal scarring because of the surgery being done in an actual legal hospital. It’s not about God taking anything, or about which is a little monsted and which is a very good boy- it’s about Trudy and Victor both messing up from the very beginning and causing the boys losses, then refusing to take accountability for it. Or, in the symbolic sense, to just do the right thing and turn a damn bowl of cheerios towards your blind kid.

[noliaert]

"Show me were you go at night", featuring a cigarette kiss

Fixed up on this one again

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

A [intersex-inclusive] progress pride flag that explicitly includes disabled, altersex, a-spec, and ethically non-monogamous people.

The altersex symbol and intersex symbol interlock, to showcase unity within the varsex community.

The a-spec compass and ethically non-monogamous heart are both within a single symbol, to showcase the unity of going against amatonormativity.

Whenever I reblogged this post by @dhddmods, the flag and its meanings above got lost, so I'm reposting. -Ap

[averixus]

To anyone who gets Personal Independence Payment (UK disability benefit) and has trouble with the types of communication they usually use (e.g. phone): I have just successfully got the DWP to promise that they will contact me by email only. If you want to do this, or need other adjustments in communication for disability reasons, email the address format.pip@dwp.gov.uk.

The magic formula to include in your email is:

"I am writing to request a reasonable adjustment in communication." (that's the legal jargon for them meeting your needs)

"I have [condition/s] and am defined as disabled under the Equality Act 2010." (that's the law that forces them to comply - you don't need specific diagnoses but can say e.g. "auditory processing issues" or whatever brief summary describes you)

"Due to my disabilities I am unable to communicate with the DWP by phonecall [or give any other communication types or formats you can't do]." (be brief but specific, you don't need to explain exactly why this need follows from your disabilities as long as you state that it does)

"Therefore, I need [your specific communication requirements] when communicating with the DWP." (tell them exactly what you actually need - for example, I said that I need asynchronous text-based communication such as email for both when the DWP contacts me and when I need to contact them directly. I specified that this includes assessments as well as any other contact about my PIP status or application. This means no in-person assessments!)

"Please contact me to confirm that the DWP will [meet your needs as requested]." (always ask for receipts)

"[Your full name], [your National Insurance number]." (make sure they can find your case)

And please feel free to share this info with anyone you think may need it! No need to refer to me or anything, just get it out there 👍 It's actually illega for them to not have already made this info public alongside their phone numbers and postal addresses, so.

[hemaris]

and i didn't even post about this yet but my boys are now INDOORS CATS! ❤️

[extreme-dyke-syndrome]

Just found out the tax return I'm using to buy forearm crutches can take 8 weeks to get to me. Having legs can wait, I guess.

Also, the fact that I have to use my tax return to be able to walk is fucking dystopian as shit, I hate it here.

[mrghostrat]

I FUCKING LOVE BNF AU RAHHHHHHHH

do you have a friend help you with the discord messages? or do you have two seperate accounts you made just for the fic?

i wrote them all myself! and then used a workskin to make it appear like discord in ao3 :) this way you can disable the workskin, use reader mode, or download an epub etc and it'll still appear as plain text like the rest of the fic.

[panncakes]

stuck thinking about when day gets crowded and overwhelmed on his birthday he calls out to gee of all people there to remove him from the situation; and how when day tells her he wants to be alone she makes sure he knows she wants to understand him and he can talk to her (not to help him or to fix things for him; simply to understand him) and when day reaffirms a boundary she accepts this and doesn't press further. he's her friend and she cares for him but he's still an adult and she has no problem treating him as such and i think that at the moment she is the only one from day's past who is actively able to do so

[big-gay-bird]

Y’all I feel like I cannot express in words how much the response to the murder of the CEO has done for like, my sense self and genuine hope.

Since I first got sick, it’s felt like me and other disabled people against a world that truly means us nothing but harm sometimes. So many things reinforced this, whether related to my physical or mental disabilities. I felt constantly backed into a corner with my teeth barred, ready for a fight for my and members of our community’s literal life. I was here to claw my way through, to survive like a cockroach they can’t get rid of. I owed that to the more vulnerable members of my community. I refused to lay down and accept what I was handed, I was going to carver a better world one way or another.

I genuinely didn’t think the rest of the world saw just how constant and prevalent medical trauma, abuse and neglect is for people like me. I’m still one of the lucky ones, I know people murdered by this system. Black chronically ill women bear the weight of this violence in a way that causes immense and life long harm.

But when the CEO was killed, suddenly everyone flooded social media to point out just how much blood he had on his hands. The medical world froze and panicked. They had to answer for their crimes for maybe the first time ever. And it hasn’t stopped either. The “claims adjuster” is still be heralded as a hero across the political spectrum.

I am in aw. I feel seen, I feel heard, I feel like other people know that what happens to my community is wrong. I genuinely never expected that to happen in my life time.

Claims Adjuster, whether you’re Luigi or not, you cracked the world a bit to let the light get in. I don’t think I can ever express my gratitude enough.

[dykesynthezoid]

Not looking forward to the “hey some disabled people really would want the option of a miracle cure and might not consider a disabled character being cured an inherently ableist concept but also yes there is a pre-existing troubling and pervasive trend around how disabled characters being cured is handled in fiction” discussion to be had over Daniel in s3 bc nobody can ever be chill and normal about it

[thatqueerbat]

how many times do people need to hear this

Do Not Touch People's Mobility Aids Without Getting Permission First !!!!

especially if you're a total stranger!!!!

idc if you're 'just trying to help'. or 'being nice'. you can mean well and do the worst shit on the planet. doesn't change anything.

ask. first. or die c:

[danepopfrippery]

They said Jordan Neely deserved to die because he was schizophrenic, an alleged drug user, and sickle cell sufferer.

THIS IS LITERALLY HOW HIS MURDERER WALKED FREE.

If you find this shit, along with all healthcare in the us shit, join me:

[autogeneity]

can't tell if i'm unusually irritable or all the tech is out to get me personally today

[whoblewboobear]

Chronic pain having disabled Jace with a mobility aid 💖