IBS Tales

I’ve been expanding my blog horizons lately and reading some good blogs from other people with health problems and disabilities. We all have different types of pain, discomfort or other bodily woes to put up with, but the ridiculous assumptions that people make about disability seem to be pretty universal.

Maybe I’m lucky that IBS is not something you can see – if I meet 10 new people today there’s no way they can tell I’m not like them, there’s no chance that they’ll start telling me IBS is in my head or that it’s caused by stress unless I let them in on my little bowel secret.

But if you use a wheelchair or a stick or a whatever, people know right away that something’s ‘wrong’ – and start making assumptions right away. In one women’s blog that I was reading today she tells story after story about people who have helped her cross the road, wanted to come home with her to help her upstairs, told her how wonderful and brave she was for having a job and how they were sure she would be OK in life because despite her disability she was pretty.

What a complete bunch of morons. You think she can’t cross the road without your help? How on earth has she managed all those hundreds of times that you’ve been absent? You think that disabled people can’t earn a living?

Honestly, sometimes I despair of the assumptions we leap to about each other, the tiny little categories that we shove people into and insist that they never break out.