I happen to have two nieces and one nephew with Type I Diabetes, So when Fast Company recently posted “How my chronic illness changed my approach to work” it caught my eye immediately. The author describes what it is like to live with a chronic or permanent disability and how diabetes affects their career choices and even their daily work relationships.
As a person who has always had Cerebral Palsy, CP, every aspect of my life has been shaped by having it. I have abnormal weakness, limited range of movement in all limbs, and I do not walk or stand. Like the article author, my own career decisions were directly affected by having CP and using powered scooters to get around. Obviously, the physical workspace has to be scooter friendly with accessible restrooms, cafeteria, etc. What is not so obvious to most people is that even my work calendar is impacted as I build in bathroom breaks and such to take into account how long even the most mundane physical activities take to accomplish. If I look at Outlook and see back to back meetings all day, a cold nervousness creeps into the back of my mind as I worry I will need to bail out of a meeting for a 15-30 minute bathroom trip.
Radio Daze
“Thanks” to watching WKRP In Cincinnati, I fell in love with the idea of being a rock radio DJ. I majored in Broadcasting in college, “worked” at a college station, graduated. and then set off to start my radio career. Four years later, I was a mainframe programmer at an insurance company. I joke often that I bailed out of my originally chosen radio career because the pay was abysmal (it was) and there were no good benefits (there were not) and that I had to babysit the Rush Limbaugh Show (still recovering from that 27 years later). Those are all true. However, without having CP I probably would have stuck it out. There was just too much “friction” in my chosen career. Scooters and van modifications are expensive and I topped out at $5.00 an hour as an announcer in 1994. I clearly needed to make more money. The way most people move up in broadcasting is to change jobs fairly often moving to different markets. So, for me, that meant not only trying to find wheelchair accessible jobs but, also, HOUSING is a whole other nightmare.
Then, there is the physicality of working in radio. Radio jobs back in the 1990s required much more moving around, needing to reach cart tapes of songs and commercials stacked floor to ceiling, manually setting satellite transponder dials, and hefting real to real tapes the size of large pizzas to tape delay programming. Without a disability like CP, those tasks are trivial. For me, they were daily stress outs about being too slow and causing “dead air.” Even putting on headphones is slow and difficult so I often did not put them on which means I did not really know what was going over the air while the mic was on. That can be…bad. And, as if the daily work physical aspects were not enough, add the fun of trying to use a barely accessible bathroom within the length of a song. Thank goodness for Don Henley’s album “New York Minute” which had three hits over 5 minutes long! As much trouble all of this was, I was fortunate. I worked at a radio station, WGIL, that actually had electric door openers and some semblance of accessibility because the family that had owned it had a son with CP, Lester Pritchard. (Fun fact: he became rather famous here in Illinois as an accessibility advocate.) Fortunately, I worked with some great people at WGIL who really supported me, but I always felt I was dumping on them if someone had to cover for me so I could use the restroom, etc.
I realized a year or so into it that it was not going to work. (I am not convince I was particularly good at it anyway.) Fortunately, unlike many DJ’s, I had a Bachelor’s Degree and I, also, had a Minor in Computer Science. My GM at the station had begun to have me fill in for vacations in the front office. So I ended up doing some copy writing, traffic scheduling, accounting, and running the reception desk. That was when I realized I needed was nice, boring office job where I could work weekdays with actual holidays and weekends and where you get bathroom breaks. So, at 26 years old, I went back to school for a second Associates Degree and eventually an IT job that paid three times my radio job. I still spent 20 years dealing with accessibility issues in the workplace but a Fortune 50 was a vastly better scooter user environment, although not perfect.
Telecommuting FTW!
Since 2013, I have been a teleworker working from my home office. Telecommuting takes even more friction out of the work day as it removes most issues with restrooms, accessible work spaces, schlepping my scooter across snowy parking lots, etc. As I get older and my physical skills decline, telecommuting is becoming a necessity, not a perk. And, as I am just a voice on a conference call, no one “sees” my disability. No more prairie dog heads popping up in Cube Land as I motor along. No more quickly covered panicked looks as I roll into a conference room and everyone scrambles to move chairs. I bet outside of my immediate work team, hardly anyone in the giant company I work for even knows about my CP. Bonus: my crazy expensive modified van will last much longer because I am not driving daily to work and back. (Although, I do miss my audio book time during the commute.)
We all have “stuff”
My point is that while the author of the article is writing about Type I diabetes in the workplace, the article is applicable to many situations. I don’t buy test strips and insulin, but I do wish scooters were cheaper. I don’t have low or high blood sugar moments that wreck meetings, but I do have to rearrange schedules on occasion thanks to suddenly urgent bathroom needs. I can eat basically whatever I want, but making a ham and cheese sandwich takes me 20 minutes at least. I bet many readers of this post have similar issues that are different but still make this article relatable. Whether it is diabetes, CP, sensory impairments, anxiety, allergies, or whatever, we all have “stuff.”
I am definitely happy I bumbled into this career where I can feed my family and do interesting work that helps people. I work with fantastic people, work for a wonderful boss, and have made great friends. But, sometimes, I wish I could have picked my career based solely on my interests and aptitudes and not had to worry about all this other “stuff.” Almost 3 decades later, there is still a radio DJ wanting to come out. Although, I still don’t miss Rush Limbaugh…
