Am being discriminated against because of my asthma!

Hi,

Has anyone been discriminated against because of their asthma?. I am normally quite a cheerful bunny (despite pesky brittle asthma) but today a colleague at work used my having asthma to get at me and took a task from me (It was a sitting down task!) And i wasn't even wheezing at the time! Am soooo mad, i always do longer hours than i should to compensate any times when i have to use my neb. I am and always have been really conscientious and anytime i have off sick i always make up. When i am in costa i use holidays and i do holiday cover for colleagues to accrue hours too to cover illness.

In fact (not being big headed) but i probably work harder than the other non-asthma sufferers to compensate. I think i probably overcompensate.

Sorry to ramble but i think thats why i took her comments to heart - she is not even a manager!! Grrrrrrr I'm not an agressive person, i don't like confrontation but i feel so mad with her.

Has this happened to anyone else? How do you keep calm? Need to be careful cos stress exacerbates my asthma... Oh joy!

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Ive been told not to take my inhalers with me into exams and subsequently ended up in HDU.

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it does happen, but in my case it was like people stopped seeing me, but instead they saw the symptoms i had. i got a lot of you cant do this/that. I proved them wrong or did it anyway (the best one was going to the sikth concert when mike wouldnt even let me go to trivium, survived the pits and joined in, admittedly my ventolin played its part!).

talk to the people who do this to you, make it clear that yes, you do have a condition, but thats only a part of who you are if they cant be bothered to treat you with respect then they probably arent worth bothering with.

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can so relate to your post, and allways trying to make sure your working as hard as everyone else, only to find your probably working harder.

am slowly learning not to over compensate, and that I deserve the same care and respect I'd give to others.

looks like your work mate tried a cheep trick - it won't work twice, you're already noticing, I'd mention it to a superior as an unjust comment.

all the best

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I can kinda empathise with you with suspected epilepsy when i started college- people (especially some teachers) didn't see me as a student, they saw the massive potential for a seizure. :0 This was especially prominant in my lab work - caustic chemicals & bunsen burners arent so nice if you fall on them!

I think the potential of a turn occouring scared them more, you could tell each of them had seen a mini worst case scenario running every time they glanced, you'd even catch them watching your every move at times -""you ok?! You sure?!""

Anyhu, it's great that we try not to let our problems stop us, infact you seem to be doing even more but as is the case some will try to use it against you/patronise ('you're so brave' actually grosses me out!) - try being a lil more assertive! ""yes i'm fine"" (kindly but firmly!) ""no i can do this just fine thanks"" and if none of those work snatch it back & snarl! x

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what if the person you snarl at does it back? or in nathaniel my mates case, tries chomping on your arms!!

when people give the ""your so strong thru all this"" it makes you want to scream!!

with asthma, beat it, dont let it beat you

and if people are annoying me, i doodle stick cartoons (cartoons involving taking my frustrations out on stick men, plus later we look at them and burst out laughing!!)

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I can sympathise with you all. I've had problems with both staff and management as I have both both asthma and epilepsy. I got the asthma through chemicals at work and find that many things affect me now. What makes the problem worse is that often an asthma attack causes a seizure. I have gone through a grievance and an appeal and am currently taking my employer to an employment tribunal. I have had members of staff refusing to work with me and some members of management seem to think that that is acceptable. I have been stopped from working for long periods of time because of my conditions. I have also lost 10 hours because of my asthma

Liz

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i had this problem once, but spoke to the member of staff concerned and spoke to the manager. the manager then spoke to the whole team, and told them just to look out for me, and only to stop me doing something if i felt like i couldnt do it.

just pull that person aside and tell them that you will refuse a task if you feel like you wont be able to do it, or it will be too much!