Recently Representative Cresent Hardy (R; NV) gave a speech that implies that people who have disabilities are a drain on society. As a disabled person, I work each week at a little job that allows me to work online and complete a report for an advertising company. I have this job largely because I can do it faster than anyone else. I was let go from this very job for one week before the client and company asked me to return immediately not being able to find some abled bodied person who can do what I do as well as I do it and as fast.
That said, every week, I wait on the able bodied people to do their job, so I can do mine. This week, while I was waiting, I was left thinking more and more about Hardy’s sentiment about the disabled.
Hardy’s words play on the very soul of those who are disabled. The majority of disabled, from my sister-in-law with uncontrolled and unexplained seizures, to the increasing number who also suffer from my condition I am meeting through my blog, live a life worried about being a “drain on society.” It is a kind of constant companion in our souls making us worry about everyone around us.
When I started writing A Token Life, I was questioned why I chose that title. The title seems to suggest that life lead in a token way represents just a small amount of what is possible. Similar to giving something a token of attention, a token life seems to imply a person is only doing enough to get by, no more and no less. A Token Life seems to suggest that I think the disabled are a drain on society.
I kept the title A Token Life because Token Lifers manage to lead Valuable Lives despite only getting a token of the energy able bodied receive. The otherabled feed those without, provide emotional support to others similarly afflicted. The otherabled spearhead education and champion just and fair treatment by pharmaceutical companies, the healthcare industry and the government. These Token Lifers carry our elderly neighbors to doctors appointments being familiar with the difficulties of getting to the doctor ourselves. Even on our worse days, the Token Lifer does not lay in bed thinking of ways to be lazy and inactive. Our first thoughts are how we can talk our uncooperative bodies into getting up and going forth even though the body is never on board with the heart and mind.
To put it another way, the other bodied are allotted fewer spoons of sugar for the very bitter coffee of life. If you were to drink from their cups, the coffee would be just as sweet, if not sweeter than the able bodied who recklessly throw their sugar “energy” around on wasted time, and efforts and in speech that disables souls and create systematic divisions in our society.
I am disabled and have dedicated my life to being a minister. I do not get any payment or compensation for my work in my spiritual community. I am fortunate to be part of a community dedicated to service and inclusivity. This has allowed me to really serve Divinity in the way that I feel like I was called to long ago.
I am also beyond fortunate to be partnered to a human who has a great job and excellent medical benefits and is in good health. Thanks to President Obama and The Affordable Healthcare Act, the protection and coverage for my condition have been guaranteed. This allows me to work a very minimal amount, having self-care be a priority in my life without living at or below the poverty line like most persons who are legally disabled as I am. It is my ability to focus on self-care that allows me to work. It is an interesting symbiosis.
The poverty rate in Georgia for persons with disabilities is 30%. Thirty percent of persons with disability are living in poverty. This means that the ability for them to improve their situation through better healthcare, better diet, and supplemental intervention is absolutely denied them. Yet, this situation created by a systematic marginalization of the disabled and poor, is no excuse to Rep. Hardy and those who support his view, for the disabled to be a drain on society.
Rep. Hardy and his self centered assertions continue the myths that persons who are legally disabled would CHOOSE the life they have been forced to live by their condition. This persistent misconception that if given an able body with the responsibility to work full time, the legally disabled would choose a “lazy life of government ease” is absolutely ridiculous given the poverty rate a “lazy life of government ease” forces most disabled into.
Rep. Hardy’s words also perpetuates the most harmful myth of all: being disabled is some type of choice in the first place.
I am fascinated by a society where circumstances beyond a person’s control somehow devalues them and is part of a person’s willful giving up of their own free will. I am further fascinated that a society structured to benefit the rich more than the poor, the able bodied more than the disabled, the white more than other races, the male more than the female, the acceptable “norm” rather than anything outside of that purported “norm,” this society, our society, sits around decrying the burden and difficulties people who are poor, not white, disabled, females, or outside the norm create.
In this society, our society, the system set up by the United States of America, I cannot afford the great treatments available to my condition – and remember, I am not living in poverty as so many of the other bodied in this country are. These treatments might actually restore me to a place where I could work full time and receive a salary again.
And yet, the very society that can only bemoan my status as a burden, are the same people who want to make it easier for big pharmacy to overcharge the United States. Big pharmacy does this because other industrialized countries will not put up with big pharma’s greed and regulate what they can charge for lifesaving and life altering medicines and treatments. Here in the United States, we would rather bitch and moan about the burden disabled people are, than act in fair and just ways to promote a situation that would help them help themselves. Besides, corporations are people too and need more protection than actual, I don’t know, people.
It isn’t just how our society defers to the interests of corporations in matters of profit, the FDA drags it heels when there are known therapies that are widely accepted by other countries to help many with disabilities. To protect the monopoly of the corporations here, the FDA refuses to approve treatments and seeks to ban or regulate homeopathic treatments that have been proven safe and effective, while protection the individual corporations.
Then to protect insurance company profits, the US allows treatments to be denied coverage that could greatly improve the disabled’s productivity.Therapies like massage, nutritional supplements, intravenous infusions and types of exercise are disallowed, not covered then not available to those who are “draining” society.
All of this and the people that I know who are disabled are blogging and supporting and loving each other through their difficulties. We band together to educate and support each other through a hostile healthcare system and a society who values wholeness and heartiness when we were born with neither. Despite the amazing amount of obstacles other bodied face, we fight daily despite being misrepresented and actively worked against by our government and society.
Just because the likes of Rep. Hardy can’t imagine a life of contribution that is valuable in the face of these societal obstacles and physical disability, doesn’t mean it is true. My Token Life is a Valuable Life.
Rep. Hardy’s is currently hampered by a disability created from a lack of education and empathy in his life. Fortunately for Rep. Hard, there is a cure for both: education and spending some time with people with other abilities.
To Rep. Hardy I would say:
I have neurocardiogenic syncope and dysautonomia. My disorder is genetic so I was born with it. I pass out if I get dehydrated, overheated, sick with a virus or infection. Because my disorder affects my immune system, viral and bacterial infections are common. My illness is what is called a system wide disorder which manifests further by me have the conditions of FATTY Liver Disease with suppressed liver function, Hyperlipidemia caused by the system failure not eating habits, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome. In order to combat some of these issues, I have given up potatoes, rice and all gluten, as well as all, meats except for organic chicken, beef and fish, when I can afford those luxuries. I shake physically when I get tired and because my heart rests at 115 beats per minute, I am tired often.
Despite this I attend water aerobics, at my own out of pocket cost, twice a week in attempt to keep my body and muscles and heart strong. This also helps with the chronic inflammation that dysautonomia creates. Further my disorder makes taking generic medicines and antibiotics difficult because I have demonstrated anaphylaxis to most generically produce drugs and many widely available antibiotics. This predisposition to severe allergic reactions is why I must carry an EPIpen all the time. I do not know when the next allergic reaction will occur nor what that reaction will be to.
The most successful medicine I can take for my neurocardiogenic syncope, makes my blood pressure very low. It is the only approved alternative right now. Low blood pressure means I am more likely to pass out and my condition predisposes me to clinically low blood pressure. I have suffered two concussions from falls because of my syncope. This means on a daily basis I have to determine whether it is safe for me to drive or not.
The systemic nature of my dysautonomia means I have already lost my gallbladder and appendix and nearly 100 days in the hospital. Because my system is so sensitive the loss of these organs has greatly affected my overall ability to deal with the disorder. With my liver already showing signs of moving to Nonalcoholic Cirrhosis of the Liver, I am doing everything in my power to preserve that organ. Further it has been medically proven that persons with dysautonomia struggle at greater numbers with depression and mental illness because of the effect of the systems inability to uptake critical vitamins and minerals into the body’s system. Minerals and vitamins that are considered supplemental by insurance companies and therefore, not covered.
I have only had one child because giving birth to the one I have contributed to exacerbating my condition. This happened because my condition was misdiagnosed until I was actually pregnant with my son and the healthcare field finally decided I wasn’t “hysterical” but had a recognized medical condition. This happened because dysautonomia is so underserved in research and education at medical schools. I believe this is because the trigger for dysautonomia and neurocardiogenic syncope could very well lie in pesticides, gmo production and distribution, environmental pollution and contamination of our food system that the government would prefer not to address or think about for fear of losing the political support of powerful chemical companies.
There is a treatment that could help my condition and it has been rejected twice by my insurance company as being “unnecessary” or “not medically proven” enough to justify the expense. I can’t afford the nearly $6,000 plus a year to take that treatment. This is because my family already pays nearly $8,000 in medical deductible a year, and keep in mind, I am one of the lucky ones to be able to pay that deductible and have a partner who has a good job with good benefits.
Given all that, I serve a faith based community of 75 people, am active in the US political process, keep my family’s home clean with their help and manage to work a “real” job eight to ten hours a week. I regularly meet for free pastoral counseling with multiple persons. I spearhead the donation and distribution of food for families in my religious community. I have taken temporarily disabled persons into my home while they recovered. I am the Executive Director of my church organizing services and religious teaching. I write a blog on leadership in the context of my religion. I write a blog about tips and tricks and encouragement for persons who suffer from chronic illness. I have had a book on family and spirituality published. In the past year I only missed working my weekly part time job once when I was hospitalized for a severe allergic reaction to a generic drug that I took at the insistence of my insurance company to save money. This is the same situation I am in right now, because a drug I have successfully taken for nearly a year has been rejected in it’s name brand form and only filled in it’s generic incarnation. Yet, today I am going to go to work and worry about that possible issue when I am forced to choose to take a drug that might hospitalize me just to prove a point to the insurance company.
I right now am running the risk of someone like you saying I couldn’t possible be disabled and do all of this and then loose the SSI benefits my family relies upon to make ends meet.
In short, Rep. Hardy these are the daily challenges that I overcome while managing to serve my church, my greater religious community, my family, my secular community and work a part time job, all while being a drain on society.
What is your excuse?
And all of this does nothing to address what dysautonomia experts call “secondary issues” a diagnosis of dysautonomia indicates. If you have diabetes and then develop kidney disease, kidney disease is a secondary health problem caused by the diabetes. In dysautonomia, the secondary issues often are where the primary symptoms spring from. For Tree Bear, the splenomegaly, inflammation levels and vitamin deficiencies all are rooted in the genetic disorder of dysautonomia, and are considered a secondary issue that requires medical attention. Often fatigue in dysautonomia is actually a manifestation of secondary issues like vitamin deficiencies, secondary infections and viral infections someone is more susceptible to because of dysautonomia.
