Compostable Kate

This is my own, personal story of my disability and how I have chosen to manage it. My thoughts and choices are in no way a judgement on anyone else's thoughts and choices.    I acquired my painful hip condition in my mid-20s, just after I had started as an undergrad at uni (I was a “mature” student, after failing school and going out to work instead), and started using a wheelchair after about six months of increasing pain and decreasing mobility (I was trying to keep going with my studies). I went through a lot of specialists (you name it, I've probably seen one), only to have no-one able to come up with a specific diagnosis for me. I have lots of weird stuff showing up on MRIs, bone scans, blood tests and x-rays, but nothing that can be put together and conveniently labelled. I was eventually referred to a rheumatologist, someone who specialises in joint issues. I saw the Professor Rhuematologist, and in our first meeting he angered me by saying that he thought my dis...

I haven't fallen literally on my arse for at least two weeks (had a bit of an incident in the shower at Hotel KaznSteve , but it didn't even leave a bruise, so it's hardly worth mentioning), but I have well and truly fallen down in a metaphorical sense. Fallen down and scraped both knees, and even though I'm 40 years old, I feel like crying to Mum about it. I came to this uni course full of confidence, straight from a job I felt I was good at, to do something that I was sure I would be great at. I felt that the stars and planets had all aligned to make my high school teaching ambitions come true, on the second time of trying. I was available, and – at QUT at least – qualified. I could get financial assistance from Centrelink (Austudy is more generous than Newstart, so it would marginally easier to survive without working). Friends and family all thought it was a great idea. Then I started. By the time I got over the physical shock of uni life I had fallen...

Obviously, unemployment equals a lack of money, and since I stopped working/volunteering at my last job (I was only paid for 2 and a half out of the 3 years I worked there) last November, money has become increasingly scarce (while I volunteered, the organisation paid my petrol and contributed to my internet and phone costs). Being really, really skint isn't fun, but that isn't the real reason I hate being unemployed. In fact, there are several reasons why I hate being unemployed. One reason is that I'm not used to it. I have been working since my teens, and have only been unemployed three times. Once when I quit college, after having left a great job to get my university entrance qualification. It was only briefly, as I found some casual work, and returned to college the next year, doing a different course. Then I was unemployed when I returned to Australia after graduating, but that only lasted a few weeks also (and how I ended up working as a telemarketer of all thing...