People with “minor” disabilities who aren’t sure if they belong in disabled spaces

People who have rare disabilities and don’t see other people with the same disability, even in disabled spaces

People who’ve been told nothing is wrong with them even though is something clearly wrong that now feel like they’re just making stuff up

People who have been dismissed by doctors because they didn’t fit the image the doctor had of what a “sick” person looked like

People who tried to get help for their problem and are still waiting

People who have unaddressed health problems in general

DO NOT DO THIS.

This makes me so angry.

If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.

My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.

When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.

If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.

Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.

I am very sensitive to lactose, not Lactose intolerant but because of stomach ulcers that are still healing. A couple years ago I went to Starbucks right after my classes with some friends and asked for a green tea latte with soy milk. The barista, for some reason out of malice and/or hate for her life so she took it out on me, gave me whole milk in my latte.

5 minutes after my first sip of latte, my stomach cramped BAD. Not the “Oh! time to poop!” kind of cramp but it felt like someone had stabbed me with a knife and twisted it. Now I’ve had this happen before so I knew the cause of it. I went up to the barista clutching my gut screaming at her that she put dairy in my latte rather than soy LIKE I REQUESTED. She denied it and called me a “pretentious white girl for wanting soy”and so my friends got the manager. I had to explain that I had stomach ulcers that were still healing and if I were to go to the hospital for this incident, they would be responsible for it.

Manager flipped his shit and the barista was terrified out of her mind. Pretty sure both thought i was gonna sue. Manager actually fired her on the spot because of the negligence. My friends managed to get me home in one piece while I stayed home for 3 days in absolute agony and missed my midterm.

Last month I went out to dinner with a friend at an italian restaurant that had a small gluten free menu. I had been there once before and had their gluten free pasta and it was great! I think one of the managers had been there and was super helpful when taking my order to make sure that everything was gluten free for me. When I ordered the gluten free pasta again this time though, the waitress who took my order all but rolled her eyes at me. I didn’t think much of it at the time, because the restaurant was so accommodating before, I just assumed it would be the same this time.

But sure enough, they brought out my pasta, I ate it, and about an hour later I had extreme stomach pains and was throwing up (in a movie theater no less).

Barfing and agonizing pain aside, eating gluten when you have celiac causes a lot of internal damage that’s hard to notice. The biggest thing is that it damages your intestines, preventing your body from absorbing nutrients properly, which can take months to heal.

90% of people don’t take my cats and dog allergies seriously when I tell them I’m allergic and wondering if a cat or a dog is present at X place. They think it’s just watery eyes. Nope. Well yeah, watery and itchy eyes, but I start wo wheeze and have trouble breathing. They don’t give epi-pen for those (anyway you have to go to the hospital after) just inhaler. It’s no miracle, specially if I didn’t take other meds before.

I am always very clear and up front with wait staff (no cilantro - I am severely allergic) I ask questions if the menu is vague (are the empanadas made with beef or pork chorizo?) and I scrutinize my food to make sure it is safe to eat, but I still get dairy in my soy chai and actually had a waitress write “extra cilantro” on a kitchen ticket once. I had to send it back with the food runner and he showed me the ticket.

Why do that?! I’m terribly polite because I feel guilty for needing the special order but I do enjoy breathing and would like to continue doing it.

Milk or beef will cause medium distress and I admit that I’ll eat them in small amounts, on occasion, if I’m feeling up to it; apples or lettuce will cause intestinal bleeding so I strictly avoid them; but ingesting even the smallest amount of cilantro will swell my throat, lock my lungs making it almost impossible to breathe and give me aggressive full body hives. I can’t even get to close to it at the store without my heart racing wildly and my lungs tightening like a fist is wrapped around them.

All in all, I do accept the risk associated with eating things I didn’t prepare myself, but I will hold a grudge against any establishment that is staffed by asshats who *deliberately* poison me. I rarely allow a dish I send back to be replaced, never go back to a place that ignored my order and I’ll leave a review everywhere I can.

Giving me unwarned-for dairy will give me severe GI problems, and the inflammation from that will set off my autoimmune disease. (If I know about the dairy, I can ameliorate this by like 90+% easily, like for example I just ate some cheese but since I fed it to myself I took medication and it shouldn’t cause me any problems. So it’s sneak dairy when I ask for something else that’s the problem.) 

I’m medium-sensitive–not allergic–to the solvents used to create decaf and certain artificial sugars (like sweet and low and equal; splenda, not so much, but I still dislike due to classical conditioning from equal experiences).  It’s minor: cramping and extended bathroom use for a few hours and basically just annoying.  Which makes any diet sodas, decaf sodas, decaf coffee, and decaf black teas not recommended and kind of sucky and at worst, it makes me twitchy and nervous along with cramping and bathroom residence.

(I do get the irony that decaf and artificial sugars make me twitchy and nervous while caffeine and sugar calm me down. But it makes it easy for me to tell when I’m given the wrong thing, which by the way is almost never.)

It’s the hat trick of lucky sensitivities; none of these are likely to be given to me by accident ever (it happened once; all other experiences were my own damn fault or an unfortunate Lent sacrifice that taught me the value of not making stupid Lent sacrifices but probably made God laugh a lot).  I don’t have to ask for anything outside the norm of an order.

Which is why I pay attention to people’s allergies and food restrictions.  It’s habit now; even with people I know, even with friends, even with family, I double check before making them anything or feeding them anything.  Sure, I remember, but why take the risk I forget something minor or I didn’t know about some small thing related to it or just didn’t occur to me because I’m in a rush or I had no idea that item actually had a trace of this?  Who on earth wants to be responsible for hurting someone–or killing someone–just by ignorance, much less malice?

Not having allergies is a privilege; not worrying about being given the wrong thing and getting sick or dying is a privilege; not having to be aware every second you are in public around food or other allergens about exposure is one fuck of a privilege.

Sincerely,

Bucky, along with all of us: