That’s fucking bullshit. That is ableism. Only people who aren’t suffering would ever tell a person who was to shut up and deal.

It’s real fucking simple. If they were sick the way you are, they wouldn’t be cool with stuff like that being said to them. But the simple fact is that they fucking assume that they’re never going to get ill, that illness either isn’t a real thing, or that people who suffer deserve to.

That’s is evil. It’s ignorance and a lack of empathy. It’s wrong. It’s the equation of illness with excuses. Just like in the past people equated sex with excuses, race with excuses, or poorness with excuses. That is a FALSE correlate, and it is fucking wrong. DO NOT TOLERATE IT.

The next time someone does that to you, bring a letter from your doctor about your limitations, and in a loud voice, demand to know what your teacher would do if they had those limitations. It’s pretty fucking hard to do jack shit if you can’t breathe. My autoimmune disorder attacks my lungs. I know something about this. So ask her what she’d do, if she couldn’t ducking breathe. And then ask her to speak to your attorney and the DOJ when you’ve finished reporting her and the school for medical discrimination..

Then do. Report them. Get your documentation on file with the school. Get doctor’s notes and letters and everything you can and then hand them all in to your deans or whoever else they tell you to. Make a photocopy of your whole fucking medical file, like I did, and slam that fucking thing on the desk of any asshole who assumes that you’ll never amount to anything and then tries to make the prophecy come true. They are the ones making it come true, so that they can be right. They predict you are making excuses and they make the reality happen to soothe their bullshit personality disorders.

I had a teacher like this. She decided in the first semester to make me her kicking post. At every opportunity she told me, openly, in front of the whole class, what. Piece of shit I was…never mind I had straight A’s was in a class a year ahead of my peers. She just slammed that home. Whole class could be talking and she’d call my name, only I wasn’t talking because I knew she’d be a bitch. One time, I wore my bike to school, and was carrying my helmet on my head, bitch says “Well, we will have a good class today because meister brought her thinking cap”

Fuck you you piece of shit grade A cunt.

And then she got my chances of attending an exchange program to Japan revoked. There were six slots, 7 applicants. I was more qualified by half, but the entire panel of judges was made of her and two of her kids who were former attendees, and three other people. She made a big fucking deal about my disability, even when I pointed out that that was discrimination. Fuck her. I spent a year abroad, taught English in Thailand, and went to Japan on my own. But boy did she give me shit. And my own family didn’t believe me, because both my parents were teachers, and my step dad had subbed for her. I finally started showing him her notes, telling him the shit she said to me. Then one day, I brought in a picture of me at one of the NJROTC formats, because she gave extra credit if we added to her photo wall. Bitch took the picture, looked at me, and goes “Well you clean up nice. I’d never have guessed”

Let’s just say, that when I went blind and had to leave her class, I went from a C to an A, because that was the semester I taught myself in my dining room, without stress. And when I came back, my dad believed me and gave her a talking to. And by then, she’d picked a new person to bully.

Bullies are bullies. It doesn’t matter how old, big, tenured, experienced, smart, or whatever hey are. THEY ARE STILL A BULLY. And you can absolutely call them out on it. It’s harder if admin won’t back you, but it is still doable, and you absolutely should.

You illness isn’t going to make you less able to learn. It’s just going to change how you learn, and the teachers job as an educator is to ADJUST AND HELP YOU LEARN. Tests don’t exist to tell a teacher you learned what you were supposed to. They exist to give he teacher a benchmark comprehension of HOW THEIR TEACHING IS WORKING. They are supposed to, BY LAW, adjust. If they cannot, then they are inept. If they won’t, they’re violating not just the law, but the public trust of being a teacher.

It’s easy for well people to assume or get frustrated with those who have illness, but guess the fuck what, Its ten fucking times harder for the person living with it. It’s ten times more frustrating for us, ESPECIALLY when no one around us takes us seriously, or presumes we are just trying to get out of things.

Stand up for yourself, friend. You have a right to. Get angry. Be pushy. Their definition of you is a lie and a bullying tactic. Don’t let them push you around. You are you. You love to learn. Go learn and make them help you learn.

Stay strong, be proactive about your health, mind your limitations, be proactive with defining your boundaries and insisting they be obeyed.

You can always vent to me if you need to. I’m here. I know I went on about myself, but only to show you that I do understand. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I’m sorry people are still assholes. Im sorry to say that won’t change ESPECIALLY if we shut up like they want us to. We have to stay angry and vocal, or they think we don’t exist and go back to the way they were.

Don’t let them. Demand that they be their best selves. Make them sorry they ever sank.