Calling All Foot Soldiers (or wheels)

Today is the day we start the revolution for disabled americans everywhere. i am tired of being relegated to the separate but equal status. we must band together and fight the injustices we face daily. we are not alone.

for those out there who've been called crazy because either they've run out of vocabulary to describe your malaise or for those of you that are labeled crazy because you have panic attacks, manic depression, ADD, etc., FROM THIS MOMENT ON YOU ARE NO LONGER CRAZY, ABNORMAL, OR ALONE. in fact, you are quite normal.

today, i reveal to you my malady, i have type 1 diabetes. i tell you this because today i was denied my essential rights as a citizen of this country when attempting to take my GRE. i was utterly humiliated in that i had to literally bend over and pull up my shirt to the proctor of the exam to show him my insulin pump was indeed not an iPod and that it was, yes, attached to my hip. and even then, he refused to believe what is a medical devise was not some mechanism of cheating that i had invented. well hey listen guy, if i could invent anything that had to do with insulin secretion, most likely it would be a new pancreas rather than a GRE-cheater devise that i attach to myself via tube. anyways, the humiliation didn't end there. the guy called his supervisor to 'make sure' i could wear my insulin pump into the testing room (he did this after i started the test). in addition, i was not allowed to bring my blood sugar meter or juice to treat low blood sugar into the testing room. therefore i went four hours 'running my BS high' so as that i didn't have to worry about a low, even though i spent the entire time worrying that i was going to go low and have to lose time on the test to leave the room to drink my juice locked in a locker. meanwhile, the proctor literally looked over my shoulder the entire test to make sure i wasn't cheating with my insulin pump. my gosh, it was so ridiculous. if i could cheat anything with my insulin pump it'd be diabetes, duh.

anyways, needless to say, my idea for a non-profit advocacy group is now going to materialize. not because of today. i had already thought of this five years ago. but today just further cemented in my mind for the need of an NAACP for the invisibly disabled. as one lawyer friend put it, disabled americans are one of the few remaining groups where it's okay to institutionally and blatently discriminate against people. now i don't know about whether we are one of the few groups but i do know it happens and it happens with grand frequency. and i do know that the ADA does not have the provisions to protect us in the manner neccessary. essentially it's the equivolent of the first civil rights legislation created in the 1870s during Reconstruction, it's a nice beta program but us peoples need our 1960s type legislation to get rolling.

therefore, i am calling on all you foot (or wheel, etc) soldiers to get together and join me, it's time we changed the system. it's time we changed the complexication.