swell. Actually they sound like they need to be taken over by people who have had to experience them, so that they can be fixed.

With multiple chemical sensitivities, there's a tendency for things that didn't used to bother you, to eventually bother you. By the time the chemicals at the hospital were at their worst, I had my own office, so was able to shove sweaters across the bottom of the door to keep the worst of the smells out. I was also working part-time at home. I tried to tell them that they needed to use organic cleaners without scent. The response was "It's not that bad." As soon as I found work enough to work full-time at home, I fled out of there. Haven't worked outside the home since. I can't imagine what the hospitals do with asthmatic patients. The lack of understanding over allergic and hypersensitivity reactions is probably part of what's responsible for medical errors being the third largest cause of death in the U.S.

... against you before you even open your mouth at an interview. My wife was a paraplegic, & she described to me some of the reactions she got when she would roll into some hiring managers office.

She found a job working for a federal government office. Back in the day, the government seemed to be more willing to accept people with disabilities if you were otherwise qualified for a position. Don't know how true that is nowadays.

We relocated a couple of times because of my job, & found that vocational rehab agencies were sometimes helpful, but they were often poorly funded & had to do some sort triage among their clients. I expect that they have even less money these days.

Some people just have heavier burdens in life, & it sucks to be one of them ... but best of luck in whatever to you!

All the hoops I have been put through in my 52yrs. Special Education schools, counseling, socialization therapy that got confusing as the rules kept getting changed (They wanted me to be more "warm and huggy" yet then said that was too much and too space invading, so stop, then back and forth). It impacted my ability to trust people.

Asperger Syndrome at the level it affects me does not interfere with my intellect, as I did manage to finish college once I decided to get that out of the way. I can also keep up with switched topics, and have been one myself to switch subjects so fast people asked me to slow down.

I am pretty sure the OP also has gone through something like this. Physical disability, that impacted me differently, unable to stand long periods of time anymore, or walk stably, then the major conditions that disability would still deny me on, and the struggles to get the help you need and deserve makes one feel like a circus animal jumping through hoops to amuse some one. diagnosed with a laundry list mattered little, it was not till they found my little clot buddy in my left arm that they finally gave me disability. (Yes, a life threatening condition seems to be what will shake the out of their denials. Of course, most folks are thinking, a nice large lump settlement along with monthly paychecks is what one gets, but in reality they only gave a lump dated from the discovery of the clot, so no, no fatty settlement as many would think.

Had I been a government weapon contractor like oh, say Lockheed-Martin, I may have gotten a fatty contract settlement, but no, just some regular shmoe with some issues of little consequence to them, so they did like OP said and basically said, "This is all we're gonna do for you, take it or leave it" and as I am unhire-able after years of diligent work, I settled for the small lump and the monthly and scrape by on the Kingly sum of 13k a yr. Fox News would explode at such a thing!

But yes, you get scrutinized, condescended to, treated less than human when applyi8ng to get help for disability as America is a society that drills "Everyone loves a winner" into the collective consciousness, and sadly disability people are profoundly against the grain of that mental zeitgeist of our culture.

I was unemployed. Getting unemployment checks (bank transfers). That in itself was chastening, hard to keep track of the incoming, debit card to get it out. I was internet banking but it still got opaque.

At that time, I was unemployed from Cornell, and essentially blackballed there, since HR had "the goods" on me. I was also a trailing spouse, so it was not like I could just move away. But I had to prove job searches, weekly quota. How do you prove that you sent out resumes and calls and got no responses? It got so bad that before my UI ended, I had just given up filing for benefits.

And I was not apparently disabled then, did not claim to be, just dealing with husband's terminal illness. It is not at all wonderful to be treated like a balky 3 y/o who needs guidance. I can't imagine having to deal with that for years at various "help" steps.

Over the course of the last couple of years, ALS has taken my Sweetie;s ability to walk, talk, feed herself or care for herself. Sweetie has her MSW and was a school social worker, It it confounding how many people talk to her like she is stupid.

Sweetie has a dedicated communications device. She uses a text to voice application, in tandem with a head mouse and dwell to click. The device is basically a tablet computer with software. It is painfully obvious that the people who created the device have not done their due diligence. The device lets the user go vaulting off into unintended places, often changing the configuration.

The device was $9860, For a tablet computer, software and wheelchair mount. You don't suppose they are exploiting the health insurance paradigm, do you?

BTW, I was dumped by my employer, because I wasn't 100%. I would have had to quit, eventually (certainly by now), but did not appreciate the way things went down. Sweetie used her sick and vacation time, then went on disability.