Girls Using Walking Sticks

Yes! I'm usually so polite - even on mumsnet - but i am sick (pun intended) of being expected to put up with downright ableism with a smile on my face.

I see my post with link to an online community for chronic illness was deleted. It's starting to feel very familiar......which is the whole point of the discussion, isn't it. How adjacent some of these identities seem to be.

chronicillnessinclusion.org.uk

I was diagnosed POTS, MCAS, EDS when I was 32, but my symptoms started when I was 9, it was just never diagnosed. I also have arthritis, ADHD, and a ton of other abbreviations that are all diagnosed prior to the correct diagnosis of POTS, EDS and MCAS which actually explain everything else.

I’ve used crutches/sticks/wheelchairs/splints when necessary since the age of 14.

Why do people have to assume these things aren’t genuine?

It’s all medically diagnosed, I have constant dislocations, beta-blockers, a blue badge and claim PIP as a result of a genuine need and yet people think it’s ok to judge and assume we’re following a trend!

In response to people also saying the same people often have things like dyed hair- again yes I do but I’m now mid 40’s and have done this since I was 14! I’m shocked how judgemental people are- I’ve never experienced it from people my own age and younger and this thread makes me sad.

It means that we both went through menopause without claiming it is as a disability.

This
Plus the usual " you're angry" accusation if it's an opinion that's not the "approved" one.
Always have to paint an alternative view as being angry.

It would be so different if you had written "i would have thought... but i see now its not the case". But you didnt. You said this reinforced your views.

Dont try and use technicalities in language to convince yourself you are actually a respectful person. Because you are not and your completely OTT response to me further proves this.

Exactly, and we also have to learn to advocate why we can do X but can't do Y

Or can do X today but genuinely couldn't do it yesterday

And I find it helpful to have organisations and individuals who do that campaigning

But I have realised that this thread has quite an unpleasant edge. It's not at all just about people who they perceive aren't disabled and use a stick, it's also minimising all manner of health conditions and implying they aren't disabling and that if people just had more will power they would be fine.

So I am bowing out because I think what these people want is a little nasty echo chamber

Re identity, I was interested in the article linked upthread that the numbers of ADHD diagnoses are pretty stable when it comes to severe cases - the skyrocketing numbers are in the mild diagnostic range, or maybe better to say diagnoses are given for some evidence of ADHD traits. And maybe we've gone from underdiagnosis to overdiagnosis, or to medicalising for traits that don't add up to a whole condition.

That's why, with some conditions anyway, I'm interested in whether there's a formal diagnosis. Everyone I know who's diagnosed with autism says that autism sucks and they wish they didn't have it. But I also encounter lots of people who identify as being mildly "on the spectrum", mildly OCD or whatever.

The cynic in me can't help but notice that these are "smart" coded conditions and remember that old Joan Rivers gag about who, when celebrities confess to eating disorders, it's always the thin ones. I've never heard of an online influencer "identifying as" paranoid schizophrenic.

If it matters, my autoimmune condition, when it flares up, can have some unattractive visible symptoms. I suspect not many 18yo girls are talking themselves into believing they have it.

I wouldn’t call this a ‘campaign’ but ‘awareness’. These conditions do limit energy. People with them need to learn to portion out their energy throughout the day carefully according to their needs (and sometimes are taught specific methods to do so).

People can choose to identify with anything they like and they clearly do....but I'm personally more interested in looking at the social phenomenon that surrounds those identifications. More interested in analysis and reflection of social trends.

Many of us personally know people who benefit from new cars, all expenses paid ( and who are not in employment) and how the system is abused in this way. The British car industry is apparently heavily dependent on people who receive PIP payments. In my city there is a whole car showroom for motability cars. You see hundreds of them on the roads.

Why shouldn't people have a "disability identity" though if they choose?! Would you feel more comfortable if they hid away, weren't as visible or vocal about it?

No what I take from that website is the language of Inclusion that is used by identity groupings more generally; and that was the point of this thread......and why you are at such loggerheads with the general direction of the thread. Becaue one of the main topics of interest on this forum is 'identity politics' and its many manifestations; primarily 'trans ideology/gender Identity theory, but also other adjacent identities, one of which now appears to be having a disability identity.

"Many people use that benefit to get a new car"
Well, it makes a change to the usual "bloomin' benefit people and their flat screen TVs" 🙄
I'd have thought buying a car would be sensible, actually - what if it gave a bit more freedom, independence? Oh, and you have no way of knowing "but they all let their mum/dad/sister/next door neighbour drive it!" Even if they did - surely it's still benefiting the person in need?!

Ps I am going through menopause too. I am finding it quite easy. Does that mean I just have a better mindset than someone who found it hard? Or maybe just maybe it means that my body is going through menopause differently from their ...

It doesn't cross your mind that different bodies react differently to different things?

Some people with Myasthenia need regularly hospital stays /regular ventilation. I don't see that as caused by their different mindset, I see it as them having a different presentation of the disease.

I have to go to bed if I have a cold because my nerves stop sending messages to my muscles. I cannot will power myself through that. If I could I would. I have will powered my way through all sorts of other things. I've climbed to a very senior role at work despite my health issues and with two young children as well.

Your post says more about you than it does about anyone else and their health.

I’m really confused by this thread and why it’s in the feminism section. I have not seen any girls with walking sticks, I’ve never heard of pots.

That is who it was originally intended for, For those in work to enable them to continue in their employment. Those little Reliant Robins were typical of the sort of provision for disabled people who still wanted to be mobile and active in employment.

We all know that PIP is much abused and can point to numerous examples of this abuse. Assessments, especially since covid, are far less stringent. There are many people claiming PIP for a condition that others also have but who don't claim for; and many of these people use that benefit to get a new car, with all of the tax, insurance and MOT paid for....and then their children, grandchildren or cousins drive them around instead as if they were their own vehicles.

Apparently 40% of PIP payments are now for people with mental health conditions, which, as has been discussed here, is a rapidly increasing phenomena amongst younger people.

Charming, quite charming. Do you consider everybody who uses a mobility aid to be work shy or do you apply other qualifiers before labeling someone as a scrounger at first sight? Also, just a friendly reminder that PIP is a non means-tested benefit. One can work full time and still receive PIP.

I went through a very drastic and sudden menopause at age 36.....and it was accompanied by what i thought were panic attacks, but which later turned out to be partial focal seizures. I would have them up to eight times a day.....sometimes In front of my class at school. I was a teacher. It had been an incredibly stressful time in my life. I think that is what led to the sudden and abrupt menopause and all of the above. But when you have children You just have to get on with it.

Accompanying the menopause you find that you have aching joints that you never had before, and that your body cannot cope with fluctuations in temperature very well, especially hot conditions. All sorts of effects.With time you learn to accommodate these changes and factor them in to how you go about your life.

Some people seem to find it more difficult to do that than others. We all know of people who both have the same type of condition or ailment but who respond very differently to it. Some people will spend the day in bed with a cold. I know someone who spends lots of time on 'self nurture'; eats only organic food; buys lots of vitamins and supplements, and is not bashful about spending money on alternative remedies, treatments and therapies....but who also is one of the most unhealthy people I know, beset by conditions of all sorts.

Somehow everything in her life is expressed through illness, disease or some type of condition requiring assistance or support.

And Myasthenia isn't a minor or trivial thing. On days I do too much I lose the ability to swallow safely. That causes a risk of aspiration pneumonia which in itself increases the risk of a Myasthenic Crisis -where breathing muscles stop working and you have to be intubated. 1/4 people with Myasthenia will experience at least one Myasthenic Crisis. I haven't yet thankfully but COVID did leave me so weak I was drowning in my own saliva at night which was terrifying

Perhaps.

But that definition also covers conditions like mine, which is being diagnosed more because more antibodies have been found. It's absolutely not a new illness though, documentary records of it go back hundreds of years and are really interesting.

And the main treatment for it (pyridostigmine) was discovered by a female doctor in the early part of last century. And the story of her discovery is exactly the kind of fascinating feminism I love.

I struggled and hated myself for 20 years for fidning so many things hard (a cold would have me bed bound, standing in a queue would make me ill, commuting made me ill). Diagnosis hasn't made me more ill, in fact it's empowered me as now I understand the mechanics of my condition I can manage my life to live the best life I can with the condition.

It's curious that your take home from a website designed to destigmatise and speak to for people like me is to entrench deeper into the harmful stereotypes and indeed invent new ones.

Only if you have bright coloured hair and dungarees apparently

Do you think, in order to claim PiP, one just turns up to the GP, points to a stick, and leaves with a bag of cash and a free car, no questions asked?