Cher was confronted with the idea of permanent disability during an online support session.

Transcript

In those sessions I did find out, in, I guess, March, that we were supposed to – that they were suggesting that we apply for disability benefits. And that totally gobsmacked me. I was like, “What? What do you mean?” I was still under the impression that I was going to … That this would be temporary, and that I was going to heal, and I would be able to go back to work and go back to living a normal life, and that I’d make the sacrifice to be bed bound, but that would end. But it didn’t. And so I slowly – I was like, “What do you mean, disabled? I don’t know that that’s going to be true for me.” And they suggested that we go to this website called the Disability Alliance of BC, and they have a questionnaire thing that you can do. And it’s kind of this neat little … app or something. Anyway. It asks you questions, you populate answers in these question boxes, and then it spits out this big, long report that you can give to your GP, or to an insurance provider or specialist, about all of the things that you can’t do in your life anymore that you used to be able to do. And so once I did that exercise to review what I had been able to do for activities of daily living before versus now, that’s when I went, “Huh, OK, I am disabled. So maybe I do have to go down this road.” Anyway, so then that started a whole – you know, a whole series of questioning and acceptance, and hard conversations with my family and my employer, and everybody else.

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