Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:
[The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE.
So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.
CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AN ANCIENT CRAFTSMAN WAS PRESENTED WITH PEOPLE LOOKING FOR HELP TO NORMALIZE THEIR DISABILITY. AND THEN SAID ‘NAH FUCK THIS WE’RE GOING TO
Shout out to all the chronically ill people who gained weight because it was getting harder to move around and are now being told it’s only hard to move around because they’re overweight.
I saw a bumper sticker the other day that pissed me off. It said “Being fat isn’t a disablity”.
Listen jerks who own this sticker, no one says that being fat is a disability. But being overweight can cause someone to have legitimate health issues. If someone has diabetes, that can cause kidney issues and heart problems. Someone may be gaining weight due to meds to help transplants, or thyroid issues. So many possibilities…
Plus there are lots of disabilities that cause weight gain. Maybe a person has to take high doses of steroids, which leads to weight gain. Heck, I take 21 pills a day, and three of those meds list weight gain as side effects. And I have gained 50 lbs. since starting them. My eating habits haven’t changed. My body has. Others with my conditions may be way underweight and need feeding tubes.
Besically, being overweight can cause disability, just as being disabled can cause you to be overweight.
Being disabled is hard enough, no one needs to suffer judgements based on their weight on top of that.
• Don’t move them unless the wheelchair user in question says you can. Even if we’re not in them at the time! Shout-out to the nurse who, during my last hospital trip, tried to put my wheelchair in the nurse’s station, thus effectively stopping me from going TO THE TOILET without asking someone. And, of course, various shout-outs to people who thought *I* was furniture and moved my chair while I was in it.
• Don’t lean on them unless you have permission from the wheelchair user in question. Again, they aren’t FURNITURE. They’re part of us. Lean on stuff that’s stuff, not stuff that’s people.
• If you walk into someone’s wheelchair, while someone is in that wheelchair, you’re walking into a person. You’re jolting us, shaking us, and potentially causing us pain (I have chronic conditions, and YOU ARE HURTING ME). Do what you do anytime you walk into someone, and apologise. It doesn’t need to be any more than, “Oop, sorry,” it doesn’t have to be a big thing (please don’t make it a big thing) but ACKNOWLEDGE US jesus christ this is so alienating. I get walked into all the time and excepting my loved ones I can’t even remember the last time I got an apology.
Wheelchairs are not furniture. They’re assistive devices. They are, for all intents and purposes, part of us and it is frankly incredibly rude not to treat them as such.
Literally everyone will ask if you broke your leg(s). Everyone. Even people you don’t know. Theyll ask a lot and think you’re extremely fragile.
bruises show up within the first day of rolling around, and they can really suck
people will try to grab your chair if they think you’re struggling and it can be hard not to snap at them for it
static electricity is a huge issue. You will probably either continuously shock your leg when you’re rolling around or do what I did today and zap someone so hard as you pass that both of you nearly keel over
people will call you out as a faker if you do anything even remotely fun ever on your wheelchair. Wheelies? Obviously your legs are fine lol not like you have to go down fucking curbs /s
puddles are the worst and if there’s a curb with a puddle all around and you have some ability to walk its a better idea to just stand up and navigate the chair than to fall backwards into said puddle
weird looks from people are inevitable, especially from people who don’t like you
bus drivers will often push your chair and give you advise you don’t want to hear, even if you tell them nicely you can push yourself. Its really hard not to get mad at them for it
no wheelies in school. Though if you do it in the elevator when no one else is with you you can’t really get caught.
speaking of wheelies, always be ready to throw at least one arm behind you in case you fall. They say tuck your chin in but its easier and more reliable to throw your hands back and keep your neck up so you don’t hit the floor. Sore arms are way easier to put up with than head injuries
don’t even bother to try and roll back up curbs. You will either be there for an hour or fall backwards. I managed to do both.
90% of classrooms that aren’t special ed are not very wheelchair accessible.
people will automatically assume you’re faking something if you’re not considered dumb enough in their standards to fit in with disabled students (aka high class ableism at its finest)
people are going to give you weird looks if you don’t suddenly start sitting with the other disabled kids
standard backpacks usually dangle way too much to keep on you easily, so try to pack light
built in storage on wheelchairs cannot sufficiently carry books
don’t try to hold an umbrella. Period. Especially not with your teeth. It doesn’t work.
don’t try to give the bus driver your ticket while you’re stuck on the ramp. And speaking of, its easy to start falling down the bus ramp so be careful, and when in doubt throw on the breaks
and finally if you’re like me pray to god you don’t go nonverbal when someone is trying to push you and you don’t want them to because it is hard to get them to stop if you can’t speak
able-bodied people can and should 1000% reblog this, some of these things I’ve seen on tips about using a wheelchair but a lot of these weren’t things I’ve seen
When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.
But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.
As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.
The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork. In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.
That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.
I had a blind professor, last semester, and I swung through his office to make up an exam. It was a while before I knew he was in there because he was sitting with the lights off. I finally went in, apologized, and took the exam by the light of a nearby window (which was fine). Forty-five minutes into dead silence he panicked and yelled in this booming voiced, “WAIT, YOU CAN SEE!!!” before diving across his desk to turn on the lights. I’m sure he was embarrassed but I thought it was endearing and it highlighted a large aspect of disabled life that I hadn’t previously considered.
Plume de Lynx 