Recently, my daughter, Lucy, a legislative aide to a New York City Council Member, contacted another Council member’s legislative counsel, Q. When Lucy didn’t hear back after a few days, she contacted another member of his office. Not long after, Lucy got an email from Q explaining why he had been unavailable. He had been on a short sick leave because of multiple sclerosis (MS).
Would you tell a colleague, whom you don’t know well, that you were unavailable because of a chronic illness? I’ll bet not. Maybe you’re even thinking: “Are you nuts? Why not just sign myself up for unemployment?”
Q didn’t know that Lucy’s mom lives with MS, blogs about chronic illness and is a chronic illness career coach. So I can only assume that he isn’t worried about telling people. I haven’t spoken with him but I have a hunch that he feels secure that acknowledging that he has MS won’t jeopardize what people think of him. Or maybe he feels that even if it does, it’s not worth hiding it.
Also in that conversation — in which he shared his story with illness and Lucy shared that her Mom lives with the disease — he asked Lucy to sign up to walk in the New York City Walk for MS with him. And she agreed. This is the first time that Lucy has raised $ for MS (she’s focused on other equally important issues, notes her proud mom).
My point? Not only did Q demonstrate that you can choose not to hide that you live with a chronic illness — but when you don’t, there might be other unintended, positive consequences. He recruited another fundraiser!
Hey, and while you’re thinking on this, let’s encourage Lucy’s on-going participation. Please donate to her effort at the website, Walk to Create A World Free of MS.
FYI: I’m not ADVOCATING random disclosure. Plan first. Check out my booklet Are You Talking? on my website first for some good ideas.
Diana Brice says
I applaud Q for being so open about his illness. Since being diagnosed with lupus in 1993 I have always been open with talking about my disease, mainly because my behavior at first (memory problems, extreme fatigue, mixing words up, etc) was sometimes so strange that I wanted people to know what was going on instead of letting them reach their own conclusions. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to have affected my relations with employers who, even when they didn’t understand what I was going through, were nevertheless supportive. The plus side is that almost everyone I talked to knew someone (usually a relative) with lupus. On several occasions I was able to talk to someone who had been newly diagnosed and was able to somewhat calm their fears.
Rosalind says
You are fortunate, Diana, to be in a supportive environment. My experience is that there are two reasons this works so well: YOU and your employer.