In April 2025 a story about ME/CFS was in the mainstream media. You can read it here. It was a good, relatable story. One quote that stuck with me was “a graceless manager who refused her request to work some days from home because it would be ‘unfair’ to her team”. Because OOOOOF […]
Health
The palatability problem
The charity model of disability relies heavily on the palatability of those in the front and centre. (A lot of disability organisations and disability focused products and services also focus on palatability.) This marginalises those who can’t perform things such as: wellness gratefulness prettiness skinniness whiteness The effect of marginalising people who fall […]
The Done List (Chronic Illness Edition)
The Done List (Chronic Illness Edition) What is a done list? The first time I came across the concept of a done list was on Twitter: I could use a “have done” list right now. Small steps are so easy to ignore. https://t.co/ENjToBZH5x — Vanessa Smith (@normal_ness) March 1, 2022 Image description: Me […]
The state will take care of that
The problem is, the state won’t. You’ve seen the issues I’ve had trying to get non NDIS supports. Others I know have been told even more ridiculous things by the same supposed support services. The problem with the shuffling that’s not going on to save the federal government money is that there’s an […]
Ticking the box
It turns out a week of really shitty insomnia and the flares insomnia caused are great for reading government announcements and turning them into mini dystopian stories. Pleasant Robot Voice: Please state disability type. Person: Mental health condition. BUZZER Pleasant Robot Voice: Rejected, this is considered a moral weakness. *** Pleasant Robot […]
Accessing the automaton
She sighed, and flipped the automaton switch again, checking if the credits had loaded. Still missing ten credits. It was three days since she’d been able to shower. Fifty credits per shower wasn’t where it had started, of course. Initially, automaton supported showers had been installed free of charge for those who needed assistance. Then […]
When the doctor tells you off for doctors sucking
As the title implies, todays post is a bit shitty. I was flicking through my facebook memories and thought this was such a classic case study of patient blaming that it needed to be a post for easy reference (I hate social media-first content, it’s too hard to ever find again and limits who can […]
Burnout tips are bullshit
I’ve been burnt out in the past few months because chronic illness is unrelenting – I barely scrape by when things go perfectly so when things are even slightly off-kilter for months at a time, it bloody adds up. I was googling tips for burnout and came to the conclusion they’re all bullshit. Tips […]
If we’re a “burden” why won’t you help us?
Recently an article was published by ABC news about how chronic health conditions are impacting productivity. Naturally the word burden was use multiple times in the article. I assume this is an economic framing that relies on a charity and/or medical model approach to disability. But the biggest problem I have with this article […]
Stop shuffling, start designing
NDIS and foundational supports come up a lot in my life, mainly due to my job. And I’m kind of sick of it. Not only is life under the NDIS only a reality for a small percentage of people with a disability, I feel like we’re rapidly losing the opportunity for foundational supports to be […]