People’s invisible illnesses are not a joke

ruffboijuliaburnsides:

vanemuine:

 My mother suffers from migraines that are often triggered by scent. This can range anywhere from cleaning products, scented garbage bags, cologne/perfume and so on. As such, she’s had to ask for accommodations in the facility she works. This has included wearing surgical masks, industrial respirators, and having a perfume/cologne free work environment.

Here’s the thing, since receiving the accommodations, my mother has gone to the hospital more than six times for perfume exposure. Why? Because her co-workers deliberately wear excess amounts of perfume or cologne to trigger her migraines because they believe their right to wear perfume outweighs her right to live. This is not an exaggeration, my mother’s doctors have repeatedly stated that any one of these incidents could actually kill her.

Oh, and let me be clear, these are deliberate incidents. These are documented grievances with witnesses. Witnesses who saw co-workers put on perfume before interacting with my mother or workers deliberately crossing in my mother’s work area despite not even working in the area. Workers who have admitted to exposing her on purpose.  Even worse, some of those who’ve exposed her are supervisors.

People don’t believe my mother when she says her migraines are triggered by scent. Because they can’t see it, they don’t think it can possibly be that bad. It has taken her literally being hauled off in ambulance for some people to understand the severity of her condition.

Illnesses or disabilities, whether visible or not, are not jokes. Don’t play with someone else’s health or well being. It’s fucked up.

When I was in training for my current job, there was a girl in my class who was ALWAYS putting on body sprays and scented lotions, despite the fact that there’s a rule against that on the site. Whatever, it wasn’t enough to bother me.

Until one day it was, and I had an asthma attack in the morning (thank the lord for people willing to share their inhaler with a broke kid with no scrip) and felt a second one coming in later and had to leave early despite some pretty strict attendance rules. (In fairness my trainer basically just didn’t report it so I didn’t get penalized for it for which I am eternally grateful.)

She was spoken to privately and the whole class was reminded about the rule and for 2 days she didn’t wear any. Day 3, she’s back at it again. So hey, I thought, maybe she just doesn’t get there are ACTUAL health issues happening. So on a break, after she’d started chatting with me and a couple other people, I asked: “hey, I’m not trying to be a pain but could you maybe not wear your body spray and scented lotion while we’re in the training room? It’s just a really enclosed space and I actually had an asthma attack the other day because the scents were triggering it.”

She rolled her eyes as if I’d asked for her to sit on the fucking moon or something. “Well I only put body spray on before I leave the house” not true “and my hands get dry so I have to use lotion.”

“Okay,” I said. “But like… maybe just not for the rest of the week? And then we’ll be out of training.”

“…but my hands will get dry.”

And then I might’ve given her a disgusted look and said “they make unscented lotion” and walked away.

But yeah. DONT BE THAT PERSON. I had a LITERAL GODDAMN ASTHMA ATTACK and her response was basically “who cares?”

Don’t be that person.