Author: Rachel Litchman

Accessible Housing is Healthcare. It Could Have Prevented My Hospital Readmission.

When my friend’s car pulled up to the front door of the hospital, I wanted to feel giddy with relief that I was finally heading home. Instead, my head spun with fatigue and vertigo. My body felt weak and my…

My Knowledge of My Body is Often Ignored When I Seek Medical Care

I walk through the doors behind the front desk of the pain clinic to room number four, the white-walled, two-chaired, one-tabled examination room that looks identical to the room I was in the last time I was here. I fill …

Disabled People are Worth More Than the Hours We Can Work

It was my fourth day of teaching robotics to middle schoolers and during morning session, one of my students pointed to the sticker beneath my collarbone. He traced it to the knot of cords dangling beside my hip and then…

We Need to Break Through the Silence on Abuses of Institutionalized Children

Content note: this post discusses psychiatric hospitalization and sexual abuse. When I was thirteen years old, I was sexually abused by a staff member in a psychiatric hospital. The first time she abused me, she took me into the examination…