She's Just Lazy!
I was a John's Hopkins university graduate. I am also blind in my left eye. In 1994, four weeks after my mother died I experienced my first migraine. I was working at a Miami Beach hospital carrying a load of eight patients on my shift then received my latest admission. When I looked up at her I only saw half of her. The rest was simply obliterated in darkness. I then looked at her chart and saw the writing was sideways with a zig zag line through it. Virtually totally blind I stumbled to the nursing station to receive the doctor's orders. I could not see anything at this point and was writing blind. I could not even see what I wrote and feared I had just gone blind. I was in terror and in a living nightmare.
I have since been diagnosed with migraines and lost my job to sick days. If not for my stroke victim father and I living together, I would have been homeless. We took care of each other and he was a WWII Navy hero. I have been denied disability for countless years and everyday I think, well maybe I will be OK tomorrow, maybe I will feel better and be able to work the profession I so dearly paid $50,000.00 for. My sister in law told my brother, "Oh, she just lazy" She too was an RN and even worked double shifts. My brother brother once asked me why I wasn't working, and having told him my whole story over and over again I asked him why do you think I am not working? He said "Because you are lazy." I hung up the phone in tears. Since then my sister in law at only 60 years of age has died leaving my brother homeless and having have had nowhere else to go has moved in with me. I do not think he will ever understand what it means to suffer the worst kind of chronic migraines, but at least, for now he has stopped calling me "Lazy".
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