Nobody knows with certainty how endometriosis works. Nobody knows what causes it, either. Patiently, politely, I had participated in months of reckless, hopeful subservience: of lying down while doctors tested and palpated and examined and queried, but never wholly explained their method -- or my disease.
There is a sad truth known throughout communities of people with disabilities: exploitation. A plethora of videos make their way across various social media sites. These popular videos, known to some as “Inspiration Porn,” use the stories of people with disabilities and cut them into thirty-second clips with a caption along the lines of 'Wow! I need to be thankful for what I have!'
I sit in my wheelchair at the edge of the pool. My seat belt is undone, just in case. If my chair somehow ends up in the water, it’ll be easier to escape that way.
Across the internet this subplot has been dismissed as inscrutable and interminable, but The Toast is made of sterner stuff. At a moment when the funding of the National Health Service in Britain is under constant debate, and junior doctors are demonstrating in the streets and talking about strike action, it’s worth taking Downton’s invitation to think about the history of paying for medical care.
She was a mesmerizing storyteller, with an eye for the lurid detail and a sense for just how much to exaggerate. I had her repeat her stories over and over again, as children do. They were touchstones in a vast, confusing universe. Her experiences and those of our counterparts in Pine Valley roiled beneath the surface of my quiet suburban childhood.
It’s exhausting to be imposed upon, to be the always responsible party – to be, in essence, the parent in what is supposed to be a household of grown-ups.
