I mentioned a couple of months ago that I’d been diagnosed with POTS and that it made me extremely sensitive to heat. And when I say sensitive to heat, I mean prone to dizziness, nausea and vomiting, collapsing, and fainting. It’s really annoying, because it’s something that comes up at times when you wouldn’t expect trouble.
Like in one of my classes.
The main building of my law school is 8 stories tall. On the upper 3 stories, there are 2 little boxy classrooms per floor. They have a wall of windows that face into the atrium that goes up the center of the building from the third floor to the ceiling. For the number of people they seat, they’re very small classrooms. They seat about 35 people plus the professor, with 2 rows on the left and right of the classroom and two rows across the back of the room.
Unfortunately, they have a terrible tendancy of getting hot. The higher in the building you go, the hotter these little rooms seem to get. It’s a combination of poor air circulation, density of people, and heat rising through the atrium and passing through the wall of windows at the back of the room.
I missed the first two weeks of class. The first week, it was incredibly hot and my boyfriend was out of town at a funeral, and Hudson had an accident on the sidewalk, prompting me to decide he shouldn’t be out in public for a couple days until things cleared up. I honestly can’t tell you why I missed the second week. I just don’t remember.
The third week, I went to class and was ROASTED. It was hot enough that I felt ill and dizzy, despite drinking about a litre of liquids during the class, between my gatorade and my water. The only reason I made it through was because I was wearing summery clothes – relatively skimpy. Incidentally, that week, the professor stopped me and recommended that I switch from taking his class officially to taking the class as a guided research class. He’s one of the professors who is very strict about attendence rules, and unfortunately law school attendence requirements have been held to be reasonable under the Americans with Disabilities Act, so there’s nothing I can do about it. By taking it as guided research, I’d be able to miss more classes without failing.
I fired off an email to the disability coordinator explaining the problem with the temperature in the classroom and pointing out that it’s only likely to get worse as we swing into fall and they start turning on the heat in the building (not to mention the fact that I’ll need to dress in warmer clothing). I got an email back from him stating that as I was taking it as guided research, I should have enough flexibility to deal with the problem.
That meant another week in the same classroom, which meant choosing a spaghetti strap, low cut dress even though the weather outside was a bit too cool for that. I was still too warm, and that time actually felt like I might fall over when it was time to get up and go. I had to sit for a while after people were leaving. Fortunately, the doors being opened lets out most of the excess heat, so I was okay pretty soon after.
Of course I emailed him back and explained that because of the unpredictable nature of POTS, I’d have to not go to any classes in order to avoid the risk of a collapse or faint. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the whole thing is that the first thing I lose is my ability to tell how my body is doing and what I need to do to prevent problems. I was a bit annoyed that my original email explaining why I couldn’t be in that classroom wasn’t good enough for him. It felt a little bit like they were trying to shunt me off to the side and make ‘accomodations’ that were the least inconvenient for them – put her in a guided research instead of a class, and then it’s all on her if she can’t get there!
In the end, they moved the classroom. It’s not a huge improvement – we’re still in one of the same boxy little classrooms, just moved from the 8th (top) floor to the 6th floor. The temperature is somewhat lower, though I do not know if it will be enough once the building switches from air conditioning to heating.
I hate things like this, where it feels like I’m treated as an inconvenience. It’s not like I get some kind of power trip asking for accomodations. I don’t push people around because it’s fun. When I ask for something, it’s because I NEED it, and my health, safety, and ability to continue going to school are jeopardized.
Look, I’m sorry I’m so inconvenient. But if you had to deal with the sheer number of inconveniences I deal with every day because of my disabilities, you’d realize that I’m really asking for very little.
Brilliant Mind Broken Body 
That really sucks. I have been treated like an inconvenience too. (But then I transferred to a university with great disability services.)
ADA doesn’t cover law school attendance? That seriously sucks.
It’s funny, my disability liason has mostly treated me decently. Matter of fact, my first year, before I had any diagnoses or explanations for what was going on, they gave me a key to the accessible door. But now that I have a request that means they actually need to change something, and that…that gets me treated like an inconvenience.
Because you know, I ask for these kinds of thing just for the hell of it *rolls her eyes*
And yeah, the American Bar Association getting their rules to be considered ‘reasonable’ and go around the ADA…it sucks, it sucks a lot.
Yeah, if you don’t fit into standard categories of disability I think it is more complicated. In my case I’m just… deaf and I want an ASL interpreter. That’s easy to get.
And professors can be sucky regardless of how great disability services are.
Oooh yeah. My relatively standard requests? All went nice and smooth. I had some of my accomodations before I had the official paperwork for them – extra testing time, a key to the accessible door, things like that. This is really the first serious hiccup. The only other thing that has gone at all wrong with them was that they said they couldn’t do anything when a professor said something that I still think was making fun of my disability. (The dean of students ended up telling her how I took the remark, and she apologized, but frankly I still believe it was intended the way I understood it.)
This is somewhat off topic, but have you heard about those neck scarves/bandannas that you soak in water? They then give off a cooling sensation all day long. If it cooled you TOO much, you could take it off, I guess.
I don’t have POTS but I do find I am almost to the dysfunctional point before I realize that my ambient temperature is too hot or too cold. I now understand how elderly people can die during a heat wave. They lose awareness of how warm they are. I have become quite adamant about maintaining a comfort zone in my home environment, and I changed jobs, well for myriad reasons but one was a building that was just as awful as you described these classrooms being, it could literally be 85 degrees in the office.
Unfortunately, they don’t work well in humid climates. I’ve tried them. I find that a plain bandana wetted with cold water doesn’t last as long but it works a lot better…but only on hot sunny days.
The other unfortunate thing is that the people I’m going to school with are my future colleagues, so the less odd I have to make myself look around them, the better. The nice thing about having the classroom moved is that the prof is the only one in the room other than me who knows why we switched locations.
Fell out of bed feeling down. This has brgtihened my day!
This sort of stuff makes me so tired. “This is what I need. This is why I need it” met with “Well, that’s so sad” instead of “Here’s how we’ll work to get that accomplished.
I’m so sorry. 😦
I have come to the realization that the disabled community is looked at as a charity case; a group who is given services out of pity. There needs to be a great movement to make very obvious the fact that this community is a political minority with RIGHTS! Accessibility is not a REQUEST it is a NECESSITY!!
I have a 12-yr-old daughter who has CP and epilepsy and who is developmentally delayed. This is the only time where I lead off a description of her in this way because these medical diagnoses do not define who she is. However, living these past dozen years with her has taught me so much about this world we live in but I realize that I see things from a parental/caregiver perspective. So, as angry as I get at the failures of society to provide necessities of life for my daughter I am aware that even I cannot comprehend fully what it is like to be in a chair (or scooter or on crutches, etc).
I am embarking on the next phase of my life with her; fighting for people like her to gain their rights. When we think of civil rights movements the plight of African-Americans and women’s suffrage immediately spring to mind. The time for this community to REALLY have their voices heard is long overdue.
I’m glad I came across your blog!
Best,
Melissa
Well, that’s exactly what the disability community has been trying to do for decades. The Americans with Disabilities Act is one of the results of that struggle. The freeing of people with disabilities from asylums and nursing homes is another.
We have had victories, but not an all-encompassing, total win. The law exists, but often the societal response does not. It’s like finding places where as a woman you’re told not to worry your pretty little head, or where people of color are greeted with slurs and refusals to serve.
It took women in the US almost 150 years to get sufferage. Legal equality for people of color took even longer. (and don’t get me started on the lack of REAL equality for women and people of color – I’m just talking legal equality!)
I think you can really count the disabilities rights movement as starting no earlier than the 1940s. The movement really only became big in the 1960s. We have a long way to go. Theoretically, we’ve had legal equality for the last 20 years, and things have definitely improved, but real equality takes longer.
This is the difference between the “accomodations” as charity model that is so rampant in our culture and the “accomodations as civil rights” issue we need to work towards.
Assuming accomodation requests are reasonable, based on the essential job functions and the fundimental nature of an education or service being provided, they need to be be given. Even if there are a lot of them. Even if they are unusual. Even if they are inconvenient to the multitudes. So many places consider accomodations as favors they are giving the poor disabled people. With that model, the favor-giver can decide how charitable he or she feels, and how much is too much.
If accomodations were considered civil rights, than they would be given to people with disabilities the same way as regular things like the teacher showing up for class and grading papers, or the shopkeeper opening up the store during the posted hours and keeping merchandice in stock, are provided for everyone.
Couldn’t agree more, Nightengale!
The issue with accomodations in law school kind of get worse when you know that in order to get accomodations to take the Bar – the exam you have to take in any state in order to practice there – you have to have evidence of needing accomodations before the exam. So the fact that I’ve had my accomodations for X number of years means I’m more likely to get the right accomodations for exams.
I actually intend to get a doctor to write for an accomodation that I don’t need in law school but will need for the Bar. I can’t do back-to-back days, so I’m going to make sure I get that in writing. Now, my law school’s policy is that you are allowed to reschedule any scheduled exams within I think 36 hours of each other, so it won’t come up here, but I need the precedent set.
I have some kind of similar thing, I don’t even know if it has a name, but I feel faint, dizzy, and nauseated really easily when I’m overheated, or when I change levels a lot or do any kind of prolonged/vigorous exercise. It comes and goes; there are days when I feel fine and days when I feel like I’m going to pass out or throw up all day. I get overheated a lot easier than I used to, I think because of some medication I’m on that lowers my heat tolerance. Unfortunately, the nature of my job requires me to stand up and crouch down a lot, move around a lot, and lift heavy things, and the heat is not evenly regulated throughout the building. I often wish I could ask to sit down for a while but I’m afraid that would be seen as lazy or shirking my responsibilities. I don’t have a diagnosis for this so I don’t feel comfortable asking for official accommodation. Sometimes I feel like the only person with this problem.
Anyway, I agree with the above commenter that accommodations should NOT be seen as charity. I feel the same way about services for people who are homeless, poor, sick, etc. The problem with charity is it allows the people in power to decide what help is given to the people without power, when there’s already an unequal relationship. It just puts more power in the hands of the powerful. It’s fine to have charity, but that should only be in addition to a strong support system that’s already there, not the only means of support people have.
Thanks for writing.
Emily, I’ve been thinking about your comment.
First off, you don’t need a diagnosis to get accomodations. As long as your doctor recognizes that you have health-related need XYZ and is willing to write a note saying such, no diagnosis is needed. That’s how I had all of my accomodations during my 1L year, when we had no idea what was wrong with me. From the sound of things, a note stating that you need x minutes per hour to rest in a cool place might help with what you’re going through, and/or a note that states you should not be working in areas over y temperature.
Has anyone tracked your blood pressure and heart rate with heat, changing levels, or when exercising and compared it to your baseline? There is a chance you’ve got something serious going on, and I think just a simple monitoring of those particular details might give you an idea what it is, how severe, and whether anything needs to be done about it.
~Kali
Thanks for your response, Kali. I did get tested once, just my blood pressure when standing and then when lying down–I remember thinking, shouldn’t they have done that the other way around?–but they didn’t find anything alarming. Every time I get my blood pressure taken, though, the nurse always says “Is it usually a bit low?” so I know I have low BP in general.
Going to the doctor is such an emotionally exhausting ordeal that I usually avoid it, except for my yearly trips to the gynecologist and the gastroenterologist for my IBS. But maybe I should get this stuff checked out. Thanks for the info about accommodations, too, that’s good to know.
Oh god. This made me feel so much better, since I’m dealing with a similar-but-different situation (lots of the ‘we won’t do anything but ask you to do completely unreasonable things’)
It sucks, a lot, that this happens. And the internalized ableism that can make us think that we’re inconvenient, gah.
Disabled rage solidarity and stuff. Yeah.
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