Anyone else doing Blogging Against Disabilism Day?

<p>

(slightly modified from the version printed in my Live Journal)

I've posted twice for Blogging Against Disablism Day, although never enrolling in the offical blogroll, just posting thoughts to my own LJ.  In 2006 I talked about working in the newborn nursery where I couldn't examine the babies the way everyone else did because my hands are not strong enough.  And about how no one was quite sure how to help me find another way.  And in 2007 I talked about some recent conversations with other medical students in which they expressed opinions about how it must suck to be a kid who uses a wheelchair, CP=MR and that kids with CP who can't communicate must be suffering so we shouldn't try to save them. 

Today my thought is that I am thankful to be working at a place that is relatively free from ablism.

Oh there's ablism. I mean, it's health care. There's "wheelchair bound" and there's discussions about kids with hypoxic brain injuries at birth because they grow up to be neurologically devastated and there's the surgeon who referred a family to the society for "crippled children." There's the attending who keeps trying to write my prescriptions for me. There's the nurse who didn't get how I could write an "out of bed as tolerated" order for a patient who doesn't walk until I pointed out that getting in her wheelchair was indeed "Out of bed"

But there's a lot less ablism here than in my previous life as a medical student. A tangible amount less. Enough less that I actually feel safe as a PWD (that's Person with a disability) at work.

When the attending in the ER says to me "you'll have to tell me what you can and can't do" and then listens to the answer - that's freedom from ablism. When the attending in student health says "I'm guessing you don't suture?" but then listens when I say, "well I have sutured but I think it would be better if you do this one for reasons A B and C" - that's freedom from ablism. When a residency-mate with a hearing impairment says "I can't take notes for the group on the board because I can't hear" and people respect him anyway - that's freedom too.

When I tell my program director I need to type and he says "I don't care if the notes are typed or handwritten so long as they are on the charts," that's an amazing statement of freedom to someone whose prior institution required an OT and MD eval and letters typed on letter head and months of meetings to reach, grudgingly, the same conclusion. It's a statement that the problems of PWD in that workplace are everyone's problems and that the important thing is to find a solution so that work can go on.

When a local community pediatrician spoke up at Grand Rounds about how Medicaid dollars should never have been spent on the patient just described, but rather one who might grow up to be "productive," and two of our own attendings immediately jumped on him, showing me I wasn't alone in my feelings, that's a kind of freedom also. And when a resident-mate who himself had been a baby similar to the one described stood up and walked out, he was demonstrating his freedom of expression.

When I can test my blood sugar in front of my colleagues without criticism - freedom. When people notice my pretty new springtime cane instead of staring mutely - freedom. When other residents sometimes take the elevator with me or sit at the back of the auditorium with me - on purpose - that's freedom.

Freedom from ablism in the workplace means freedom to be yourself, a person with a disability, not yourself trying to hide your disability or prove yourself despite your disability. And really it means freedom to do what people at work are supposed to do in the first place, which is get the work done.

It's funny that my first BADD post was about working in the nursery because that's where I start today. I still can't lift a baby onto my outstretched hand but I can roll one over and examine every inch as need be. I can teach medical students how to examine a newborn baby and point out what I do differently than they are likely to, not as a deficit but as a difference. The job gets done. Two years ago I posted "And so I'd better just get over it" and I guess I got over it. Not being put on the defensive at school/work for my very existance helps a lot in the getting over of it. About a year ago I was told I should "rethink my career choice" of pediatrics since I couldn't carry babies around the delivery room. Someday I hope that person can rethink her predjudices. I can do the essential job functions of a pediatric resident with and without reasonable accomodation. The rest is commentary.

Is there still ablism here? Well yeah, I work in health care. There is so far to go. But there is so much less of it, I feel thankful every day when I come to work that I ended up in this place. And let me never take for granted what it's like to work somewhere that is free enough from disablism to let me get the job done.