“All bodies are unique and essential. All bodies have strengths and needs that must be met. We are powerful, not despite the complexities of our bodies, but because of them. All bodies are confined by ability, race, gender, sexuality, class, nation state, religion, and more, and we cannot separate them.”
From “What is Disability Justice” (Adapted from Patty Berne’s “Disability Justice – A Working Draft”, Published in Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People, A Disability Justice Primer, Second Edition.
As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:
“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.
Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
I had my most recent physiotherapy appointment today. They said I need new orthopaedic inserts in my shoes, which the NHS doesn’t pay for, I have to find the money for that myself. They also said that as all other treatment so far has failed and I am still debilitated to the point of being barely mobile, they recommend shockwave therapy to try and repair some of the worst injury. However the NHS is gradually cutting funding, and outright stopping paying for treatments that it used to pay for. In fact, just yesterday there was an article online where the journalist was talking about how her elderly father needed his ears syringed and her child needed treatment for warts, both of which the NHS used to treat for free. But now the NHS no longer pays for those and the woman was told her father and child would have to go private.
Well, same thing with the shockwave therapy. Fewer and fewer NHS hospitals are offering this as the NHS gradually gets dismantled, and my local hospital’s physio department can’t offer this. My physio said she could refer me to go private, but I have to pay for that.
I just despair at the state of this shit hole country. First they took nearly 4 years to diagnose my cancer. They don’t warn me the treatment can cause strokes. Then I have a stroke and after all this they stop my disability benefits, leaving me without income. Then, due to long waiting lists, I have to wait so long to start physiotherapy that the damage is already done. Then when I finally get physio, it’s too infrequent due to having so many patients and not enough appointments, so the problems I’m having gradually get worse instead of better. Now there’s a treatment that could help but I, who have no money, have to pay for it myself. And then this shitty government complains that there are too many disabled people and the benefits bill is too high. THIS IS WHY THERE ARE SO MANY DISABLED PEOPLE! Because it’s impossible to get prompt or adequate treatment and so we never get cured, we’re left to rot until it’s too late and our problems are permanent!
But that’s stupid and doesn’t save any money! You need to have the machine anyway for kidney stones! You already have the machine! It’s not even that expensive a machine in relative terms!
Everything about the way the disabled are treated is stupid and doesn’t save money. For instance if they had more physiotherapy appointments to start with I wouldn’t have ended up so disabled in the first place. But they’d rather save a bit of money by providing fewer appointments. It’s the same with every medical thing in the UK. Cut the NHS down to save money but then people end up sicker, more disabled, can’t work and rely on disability benefits. So cut disability benefits. People become homeless and hungry and end up in hospital with malnutrition and hypothermia, and eventually have to be put in a bed and breakfast, and this is all more expensive than just continuing their benefits.
But this isn’t even a short term saving or anything, they ALREADY HAVE THE GIZMO. It’s already in the building! They’ve got people trained to use them. They aren’t and can’t get rid of the machine or the training!
They’re just being cocks for the sake of it!