I don't think people realize that living with chronic illness / disability, even one that is considered relatively "mild," is basically a full time job in and of itself.
The amount of time you have to dedicate to scheduling appointments, coordinating with insurance, communicating with pharmacies, playing messenger between different medical professionals, making phone calls, rescheduling appointments, managing medication, attending appointments, repeating the whole thing again for follow-ups-- because in addition to whatever your condition affects, you also have to deal with all the other regular Human Body Maintenance that any able-bodied person would (the occasional illness, ear infection, dental procedure, ingrown nail, etc) and that ALSO needs to be taken care of on top of all the pencil-pushing you're already doing to try and treat and/or diagnose your condition. That takes a LOT of time, and is especially difficult if you're trying to work a Mon-Fri 9-5, because that means nearly ALL of the things you need to do to care for yourself medically must occur during your working hours.
Then there's the time that the actual condition takes from you directly, the type of which varies widely from person to person and what exactly they struggle with, but it remains a huge time commitment nonetheless. Taking forms including but not limited to: taking longer to get from one location to another due to limited mobility, time spent recovering from an activity that put you under too much strain, time spent unable to perform other tasks because you are in pain, or sleeping longer than average due to any myriad of reasons related to physical and mental disability, time spent unable to perform other tasks because you're experiencing a mental health episode or crisis, or having to closely read labels and ingredients for everything because of dietary or medication sensitivites. And that's just a handful of things I could think of off the top of my head based on the experiences of myself and people I personally know. Frankly, every disability just automatically comes with a huge deficit in the amount of time you have in a day, because you're gonna spend a massive chunk of that time,, just,, experiencing the effects of that disability.
This was written from my perspective as someone who is not widely considered disabled, who does not require caregiving and has been privileged enough to at least keep my head above water so far. But, knowing how difficult it is to me, I can only imagine how it feels for all the other members of this community.
All this to say, this disability pride month, don't forget that not everyone has the same amount of hours in a day.
