This means that anyone who has a handicap, despite the "definition", works harder than usual in order to achieve things that a healthy person can without much effort.
I am handicapped and my achievement is working. I struggle unusually hard to be able to work. I make sacrifices in order to work. Sacrifices like losing time with family because all I do is sleep when I am not working. Sacrifices like getting more sick in return for working hard. This list goes on and on. Another sacrifice I have made is losing some pride. I have a handicap sticker which although I have lost some pride because of it, it helps me to be able to get to my car after work.
About three weeks ago I was at work and the SWAT nurse, the same one I wrote about before, came up to my charge nurse and asked what was wrong with me that /I need a handicap sticker. The nurse didn't know that I even had one. So she didn't really have much to say to the SWAT nurse. She went on to say that it must only be a temporary one because, "How can she work if she is handicapped. How can she do her job right if she has a handicap?"
I went into the bathroom and cried. She was SO concerned about me parking in a handicap spot that she just had to dig for some answers. I have a couple different thought and responses to her prying. My first thought was, "Why can't she just come ask me why I have a handicap sticker instead of asking everyone else?" and my second thought was, "Why the heck does she think that this is ANY of her business?!"
I come to work, despite my illness, and do my job. I care about my job and my patients and so I ignore my poor health and work as hard as possible.
I couldn't fathom that someone who is in health care and does direct patient care could be so oblivious to the fact that handicap isn't just a straight forward, black and white concept. There isn't just a one size fits all when it comes to disabilities.
So here is what being handicapped is and is not.
Handicap is NOT just wheelchair bound people. It is people who you can't always see something wrong with. It is people in wheelchairs or on crutches or using canes. It is children and it is adults. It is mothers daughters, sisters, brothers. It is people who can't work and it is people who can.
Handicap is NOT always limiting. Sometimes we can go to school and work. Sometimes we can go out with friends or on vacation. Sometimes we can walk and sometimes we get pushed in wheelchairs.
Handicap is visible and invisible. Some of us are seemingly normal people where it doesn't look like we have anything wrong with us. Some of us are very obviously visibly handicapped.
Handicap does NOT mean we aren't capable of driving, walking, dancing, or working, It doesn't mean that we can't go for runs or long walks. It doesn't mean we can't work in physical jobs. Because a lot of us do, everyday, and we struggle immensely but we don it anyways.
The biggest thing people need to realize is that most of us, though at a loss of pride, are not ashamed to be who we are and how we are. We are real, everyday people who just want people to try to understand that we are capable of a lot more than some people think. My biggest advice for anyone who is healthy and wondering about why we have that handicap sticker when we look just fine, or why we are in that wheelchair just ask us. Most of the time I am more than willing to answer questions about it all, but when people don't ask or assume things about why I am how I am, it shuts me down. It makes me angry and frustrated.
Handicap is not a "one size fits all." It affects so many of us. It affects our friends, our coworkers, our family, and our peers and we need to start having an open mind about how being handicapped looks different on all of us.