This month I am hobbling around on a walking boot. (Apparently I somehow tore a muscle in the bottom of my foot doing nothing more than walking the dog around the block.) I had plans to travel into NYC multiple times this month, and I was determined not to let the boot impact my plans. My first trip was low-stakes – I went to visit a friend so I didn’t have a set time that I had to be there. That took the pressure off. The boot is on my right foot, so I have to remove it to drive, then put it back on before I get out. I drove an hour to Jersey City then navigated the Path and two subways to my friend’s neighborhood in Brooklyn.
First and foremost, NYC is not very accessible. I can do stairs, but I am slow and it’s difficult, so I prefer not to. It is not entirely clear where escalators and elevators exist and you can spend a lot of time searching them out just to find out they don’t exist or they aren’t functional. I have also inadvertently ended up outside on the sidewalk when I meant to end up on a subway platform. The experience has certainly opened my eyes to how hard it must be to be independent in NYC if you have any permanent physical limitations.
But for me, there was another huge a-ha. I was struck by how kind people were seeing the boot on my foot. They held doors, asked if I needed help, and not one, but TWO men on a crowded subway went out of their way to make eye contact with me and ask if I wanted their seat.
My takeaway was not centered on the fact that people were kind to me at this moment. Rather, it was how last year for a period of about 2 months I commuted three days a week with back pain far worse than what I am suffering with this boot, but no one could SEE it. There were many times where I was stuck in a position that caused terrible pain and there was nothing I could do about it. OK, I suppose I could have announced “I’m in pain, someone get out of my way” but what kind of Herculean effort does that take, especially for a person who is already in pain?
When you have an invisible illness, the onus is on the one suffering to ask for help. And frankly, that is exhausting. I got tired of hearing myself talk about it, so I opted to suffer in silence. When the pain finally got to the point of shutting me down (stopping every five minutes to change position, or laying on the floor during meetings at work) people stepped in.
A friend recently suffered from a two month bout with vertigo. She would get suddenly and horribly dizzy while grocery shopping, she couldn’t rely on driving herself anywhere, and when we walked around the block together, if she turned her head towards me in conversation it would sometimes knock her off balance. But she looked absolutely fine! I remember talking with her about the idea of an invisible illness and we acknowledged at that time how much pressure that puts on the one who is already suffering to have to ask for help or explain themselves.
There’s not an easy fix here other than wearing a sign around you neck that says “I’m in pain.”. But two things come to mind. One, I’m personally trying to walk through life with an understanding that you never know what kind of pain someone is feeling, physically or emotionally. The other thing is a simple recognition that when you are suffering from an invisible illness, know that there is going to be a mental and emotional toll as well. And you will need to seek out people who care for you who can take on some of that load.
Now you might be thinking – “But Beth, what does this have to do with work culture?” Well, this is about our humanity, our whole selves. When I was in pain last year, I couldn’t leave that part of me at home. I brought it to work with me. And it impacted my work, as much as I tried to not let it. As colleagues and as managers, we can be those people who take some of the pressure to ask for help off of the one who is suffering. We can hear people the first time they ask, and not make them ask again (over and over). We can make accommodations that allow people to take care of themselves and continue to contribute to the work, or we can raise a flag if we think the person needs to focus only on taking care of themselves. We can protect the people we work with over the work, because without the people, there is no work.
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