Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Sophie's Thoughts / Genuine Health Issue vs. Wheelchair Pretending
Genuine Health Issue vs. Wheelchair Pretending
Written by Sophie on Thursday, June 22, 2006
As you know (if you’ve been reading all of my posts), I do have a few health problems. I would never try to say my health problems are as bad as other people’s, but they are real and cause me some pain. If you want to know what they are go read Sophie. I’m involved in a health group in yahoo and I genuinely care about them, as I was always sure they cared about me, but recent events have made me wonder.
Most of the people in that group know about my website, and know that I pretend in wheelchairs for my emotional wellbeing rather than my physical wellbeing (although it helps with my flat feet a lot). They are currently deciding on new moderators in this group as the previous ones are becoming too busy with daily tasks and their health issues to moderate the group. I posted this message saying:
I am available if you ever do need help. I have heaps of experience with yahoo groups and moderating and I am awake when you are all asleep. I realize you probably wouldn’t want my help.
The owner then posted a rather long post and in it he wrote the comment: “Since this is a group made up of people who are in pain, it seems likely that the moderators should not be pretenders”. I’m not sure if he was directly talking about me but this makes me concerned. Does the fact that I’m a wheelchair pretender invalidate my health problems? I try not to stress over things that people say on the net, Sean is constantly telling me to stop worrying, quit looking behind me and start looking ahead, but the thought that my health issues aren’t as important as others’ just because I pretend really makes me angry.
I’ve been through a lot of pain in my short life. I almost died when I was a toddler. I went through the excruciating pain of kidney stones when I was seven. I constantly burn myself with my shaky hands. I can’t stand for longer than ten minutes before my feet start getting excruciatingly painful (one of my friends is attempting to get me to go to a physio for that). None of these things were pleasant. When I was seven, my best friend was a hot water bottle. It helped ease the pain in my gut. That hot water bottle burst last week when I tried to fill it, which really cut me up. I got called a maggot, a disease, a no mate, contagious through all my schooling years simply because I have a condition called celiac disease. My mum got so sick of it she went to the principal three times to complain and he never believed us.
Ultimately my pretending has nothing to do with my health problems. These health problems are things that I have learned to live with, things that I don’t complain about, and I’ve never burdened the people in this group with some of the things I go through. I don’t tell them I had to drink my hot chocolate the other day through a straw because I couldn’t pick up my cup. I don’t tell them these things because I know that the things they go through can be so much worse. I have a lot of respect for them in terms of coping with the pain they endure every day, and I’ve told them so. But now that this has come up I’m scared they see me as nothing more than a pretender with flat feet.
Added Note I left that group today. I decided that if this was how they felt about me I’d worn out my invite to the group and it was best to bow out gracefully before anything worse was said.
This entry appears in Other's Thoughts, Sophie's Thoughts, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You may have your say, or trackback from your own site.
Post your comments
© transabled.org - 1994-2008 - All Rights Reserved.