When you are diagnosed with a disability, sometimes people think that their doctor will tell them everything they need to know to live well with a disability, and I only wish that were true. Doctors can help you improve your health by telling you about all the surgeries and medications that can improve your quality of life, but you aren’t going to learn everything from your doctor. Most doctors are not disabled and probably are unaware of the challenges disabled people face outside of what’s in their medical textbook. I think that the only time a doctor might have more knowledge is if they happened to have a family member or were good friends with a disabled person who had the disability they were treating. Doctors can learn a lot from their disabled patients because we can tell you things based on our experiences that you will not read in your medical textbook, but unfortunately, a lot of doctors are arrogant and do not care to listen to us because we aren’t the ones with a medical degree. Disability can be scary because there are a lot of unknowns, and I wish that doctors could tell us everything we need to know, but you are only going to learn that from other disabled people. What do doctors not tell you about disability? In this post, I am going to talk about a few thing about being disabled that your doctor won’t tell you.
It’s going to be more difficult to make friends- Health challenges can be difficult to navigate when you have a disability, but unpredictable health is not the hardest part of my disability. The hardest part of living with a disability is that you have to accept the reality that people without knowledge are going to discriminate against your disability, and it’s going to be more difficult to make friends. When you are diagnosed with a disability, doctors don’t tell you that it’s going to be more difficult to make friends, and you figure these things out when you go to school and are eating by yourself because no one wants to be friends with a disabled person. I think that it’s probably good that doctors don’t tell you that disabled people face more discrimination than non-disabled people because more people would fear disability, but it still would be nice to know these things and it not be a total surprise.
Medication doesn’t take the pain away- When you are diagnosed with chronic pain and are prescribed a medication to help get relief a lot of the time people think that the medication that was prescribed is going to give them complete pain relief, and I only wish that were true. Some people with painful conditions still experience significant pain that has a major impact on their quality of life and are getting very little relief from their meds. People who are new to chronic pain sometimes get a false idea that medication cures you because doctors don’t always clearly explain that pain medication only gets your pain to a level you can function.
Some people are not going to believe you- If you have a physical disability that is easier to see, usually you won’t have the problem of people telling you that what you are experiencing is not real because people can see you are disabled. When you have invisible disability, sometimes you are called a faker because it is often believed that you have to look disabled to be disabled. Doctors don’t tell you that people without knowledge are going to call you a faker, and sometimes, even medical professionals will accuse you of not having a real disability because they have never heard of it. I think that one of the hardest parts of living with invisible pain is having to convince people that what you are experiencing is real, even though you might not understand it.
Sometimes you are going to be left out- One of the things that disabled people have to learn to accept is that you are going to be isolated and left out of things sometimes because some activities are impossible with your disability and not accessible. The challenges of my disability are hard, but not being able to walk is not nearly as hard as having to watch people do an activity you can’t participate in because no one prepares for the number of barriers you will face, and feelings of isolation. People are always telling disabled people that we need to accept our differences, but that is a lot easier said than done because it’s difficult to accept the reality that people aren’t always going to want you there, and sometimes you can’t participate due to the lack of accessibility.
Fitness is not accessible– Doctors are always telling disabled people that we should exercise and shame us when we don’t exercise, but what they don’t tell you is that fitness is not accessible, which makes it more difficult for disabled people to want to exercise. Disabled people know that we should exercise, but it would be more helpful if doctors gave us suggestions and told us how to exercise or directed us to someone who can, instead of just telling us we should, because that is not helpful. Fitness is not accessible, and people don’t tell you that almost every workout on the Internet is designed for non-disabled people, and just expect disabled people to find a way to exercise. I do not blame disabled people for not wanting to exercise because it’s hard to find an accessible routine, and most people aren’t going to want to spend hours finding a routine they can kind of do. Doctors don’t warn you about how inaccessible fitness is because sometimes even medical professionals are unaware of that.
Doctors will tell you a lot of things that can help you stay healthy, but they don’t tell you about ableism because they probably don’t know what it is. I wish that doctors were able to prepare disabled people for the barriers they will face because these aren’t surprises you want to learn the hard way. You can learn a lot about your health from your medical team, but you won’t learn everything because there are some things about disability that doctors are not taught. I have learned a lot from my doctors, but they have never taught me anything about accessibility because that is something you can only learn from disabled people. Doctors and patients can learn a lot from each other because I may not have gone to medical school, but I have experiences that my doctor will never have. What have you learned about disability that your doctor did not tell you? If you liked this post, please leave a comment below and share it with your friends.
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