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The other day at work, I received a meeting request from a new member on the team. She wanted to have a meet and greet. I accepted the meeting invite and expected the conversation to be strictly about work. Boy, was I wrong. 

As it turns out, my new team member has MS. We have a mutual work friend who suggested that the two of us talk. And what a great talk it was. We are about the same age and have been living with MS for about the same amount of time. 

We talked about what MS therapies we each have tried. We also talked about what worked and what didn’t. She even taught me a new MS term I had never heard of before called smoldering MS. I shared that I write articles about MS and I told her that I would research smoldering MS as an upcoming topic.

One of the things she found interesting about me is my willingness to talk about MS at work. For example, everyone at work knows that I have MS and I am now one of two people at work who knows she has MS. She wanted to know why I made the decision to share. My advice to her was to know your audience and only share what you are comfortable with and make sure it is relevant to the position. 

In my case, I make a lot of presentations to our customers. I work for a medical software company and my customers are all people who work in the medical field. So, my personal MS journey works well in the medical software industry. However, I worked in real estate development when I was diagnosed. My coworkers saw what I went through and it affected how they treated me. Before my diagnosis, I was at the building sites every day, but after my diagnosis, I was asked to stay in the office and my role changed. They said that the decision was made to help me advance, but I loved the field and always believed the change was because they were afraid of my MS. 

While people with disabilities are protected under the American’s with Disability Act, which does not mean your coworkers or leader won’t have an unconscious bias towards your condition. Unconscious bias means that you believe in a stereotype about a group of people but you are not aware that you are doing it. For example, people who get upset about a person using a handicap sticker when they don’t look handicapped is an example of unconscious bias. Or, in this case, telling your boss about MS could lead to not getting a promotion because of an unconscious bias they may have about your disease. Unconscious bias is a risk of sharing your diagnosis at work.

In the end, it comes down to reading the situation. If you feel comfortable discussing your MS at work, then it can be a positive experience. The ADA protects your rights as a person with a disability and your workplace must make accommodations if you ask for them. Always use your best judgement when sharing personal or health information. Ultimately, I decided I didn’t want to work in an industry that saw me as a person with a disability. Rather, I wanted to work in healthcare where my coworkers and leaders judge me for the abilities I still have.