Thank you for sharing this. I think this is the most important thing I've been linked to in a long time.
This may be even more tangential, but I was really struck by how emphatic he is about pointing out his suffering, and how frustrated he is with other people that have his same injury minimizing the pain of living with it. I've seen that same discourse go on and on with people that suffer from my condition. Not "disabled" as such, but another issue that impacts your life in a large way and often needs medical intervention. Some people claiming that their condition doesn't limit them in any real way and shouldn't be considered a problem and in fact makes them stronger and others angry at them for even making claims like that when so much of our existence is this fundamental pain, and when medical intervention isn't always covered by insurance or researched as much as it could be. Then those first people mad at the second group for implying that everybody with this condition should feel limited, etc. I thought that the dialogue was unique but in retrospect all similar groups probably go through this to some extent for the reasons he pointed out.
This may be even more tangential, but I was really struck by how emphatic he is about pointing out his suffering, and how frustrated he is with other people that have his same injury minimizing the pain of living with it. I've seen that same discourse go on and on with people that suffer from my condition. Not "disabled" as such, but another issue that impacts your life in a large way and often needs medical intervention. Some people claiming that their condition doesn't limit them in any real way and shouldn't be considered a problem and in fact makes them stronger and others angry at them for even making claims like that when so much of our existence is this fundamental pain, and when medical intervention isn't always covered by insurance or researched as much as it could be. Then those first people mad at the second group for implying that everybody with this condition should feel limited, etc. I thought that the dialogue was unique but in retrospect all similar groups probably go through this to some extent for the reasons he pointed out.