30 Days of MD: Accommodations and MD

by Danielle "Dani" Liptak | September 8, 2019

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Day 8 of #30daysofMD – Casey Duffield’s Story Accommodations and MD I think the word accommodation needs some accommodating. As someone who looks relatively healthy and unaffected, accommodations are not something that I have made in my house just yet. Ya know, wider doors, higher toilets, and hand rails in the shower. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other accommodations that are made, they are just not always as obvious. As the daughter of someone who was never officially diagnosed correctly, I accepted that people are scared of what they don’t understand. They stare and whisper, pointing at adaptive equipment they are afraid to ask about. That bringing a boy home to meet my dad meant explaining why he was “sick” and had a hole in his neck. No long trips out of the house because using the bathroom by himself was not only challenging, but a safety issue as well. These are some of the accommodations I made for my dad. As a wife and mother with an official diagnosis of Hereditary Myopathy with Early Respiratory Failure (HMERF), my husband and two boys are now accommodating me in their own ways. Helping me walk down the football bleachers (cuz this girl loves watching her son play!) and understanding that I may look like a fully charged Duracell, but I function like a generic battery J My boys help me off the floor because I can drop it like its hot, but cannot bring it back up! My husband helps with more chores around the house so I can maintain my energy to enjoy the things I used to miss because I had spent my limited energy trying to maintain the image that I could keep doing what I had always done. My parents have also made accommodations. They sold their NJ home of 30 years and moved to Georgia to help me with my family and uphill challenges to help me keep my independence as long as possible. These are just a few “accommodations.” I think the word accommodation needs some accommodating. Maybe we just need to consider the word adjustments or alterations. Sometimes accommodations are just realizations that we each have our own strengths and weaknesses. That we should slow down, allow others to help us, and not try to carry the world on our shoulders.

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