Taylor Westerfield Invisible Disability

I really enjoyed the talk with Taylor Westerfield about her recent onset of disability. Her talk about how it feels like to live with chronic pain and an invisible disability was insightful. I hadn’t even heard about Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (EDS) or Complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) before. She talked about a lot of important issues like how a disability can change relationships with people, how it can make it difficult to get around, and how it’s like to be looked at and treated differently when using a wheelchair versus without a wheelchair. She mentioned how her parents initially refused to acknowledge that she needed a wheelchair to get around because they didn’t want her to rely on it, and that her parents had trouble understanding what she was going through. She also discussed that maintaining a friendship with people is difficult because she can’t go out and make plans like college students typically do. What she said about how when people keep asking someone to hang out and that person keeps refusing then they stop asking is true. It was unfortunate that the only friend she had going through the same thing as her betrayed her by stealing her medication. She
It was sad to know that a lot of people with this diagnosis had decided to end their lives, but I am glad to see that Taylor is living the best she can. I was happy she came in to talk to us because it really put things in perspective for me since she reinforced the fact that anyone can suddenly get a disability at any time. I used to think that people are either born with a disability or become disabled with old age, and that because I am young and healthy I won’t have to worry about living with a disability just yet. Which is why I was shocked to see someone around my age talking about how she lived a pretty normal life as a student, but suddenly got diagnosed with a disorder that made her