The New York Times‘ Lesley Alderman offers on-the-job strategies for people with chronic illness, who must learn to manage not just their illness but workplace policies that can affect job security. Rules governing time off are murky, Alderman says.

Among tips she offers:

• Inform your employer about your condition.
• Seek reasonable accommodations.
• Learn your company’s personnel policies, and federal laws and regulations.
• Explore working part-time or taking a different job if needed.

Dr. Christopher D. Saudek writes in the Baltimore Sun that Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination points out the contributions of people with diabetes, and reminds us that each person with a disability “is entitled to individual consideration and reasonable accommodation.”

Saudek says court-mandated limitations on the Americans with Disabilities Act deprived people with diabetes of legal protection against discrimination. The ADA Amendments Act last year extended protection to disability groups that had been excluded.

Much is being written about Judge Sotomayor’s legal prowess, her ethnicity and her gender, but the other story is at least as big. It is the story of medical progress that allows people with diabetes to lead full, healthy lives. It is the story of how some 24 million Americans with diabetes, more than 2 million with type 1 diabetes, are increasingly contributing in the mainstream of American life. And it is the story of the ongoing effort to snuff out the remnants of discrimination against people with chronic diseases like diabetes.

Dr. Christopher D. Saudek is a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and director of the Johns Hopkins Diabetes Center.

(ABC News photo)

On NPR’s All Things Considered, Joseph Shapiro asks whether diabetes – or any other health condition -  should be a factor in deciding whether someone like Sonia Sotomayor is qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.

Some commentators have raised Sotomayor’s health as an issue, saying diabetes could shorten her lifespan. Diabetes experts say new treatments are allowing people to lead long, healthy lives.

Endocrinologist Paul Robertson, president for medicine and science for the American Diabetes Association, suggested Sotomayor be asked whether she is taking care of herself properly.  “Those kinds of questions make sense because you’d ask the same questions of somebody with a chronic disease like heart disease or cancer or leukemia,” he said.

Chai Feldblum, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who has a specialty in disability civil rights law, says Sotomayor’s example could reduce the stigma that exists around diabetes.

“It matters that a nominee for the Supreme Court is someone who acknowledges she has diabetes and that forms an aspect of her life,” says Feldblum. Disability civil rights groups noted that, at a time when other judges had limited the scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Sotomayor ruled in favor of disabled plaintiffs, including a woman with learning disabilities who’d gotten extra time on tests during law school but then was denied the same accommodation when she tried to take the bar exam.

Earlier posts here.

John Nichols, writing in The Nation’s ‘The Beat’ blog, says Sonia Sotomayor’s lifetime of managing Type 1 diabetes is a “big deal” that adds to her value as a potential Supreme Court justice — and not just as a role model.

Sotomayor’s experience is particularly important, Nichols writes, to a court that will be addressing a growing number of cases that focus on health-care access and medical research. An excerpt:

To have a judge who understands, through personal experience, the challenges and the needs of Americans with with serious diseases, lifelong conditions and profound hopes for medical breakthroughs.

This is another piece of the diversity puzzle, an essential piece that ought not be underestimated.

In a very real sense, the disease that steered her toward a legal career and a place on the federal bench is one of the greatest strengths that Judge Sotomayor would bring to the Supreme Court.

Earlier posts here.

Sam Stein writes in the Huffington Post that questions about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is among the frontrunners for a Supreme Court nomination, have sparked a broader debate about the appropriateness of vetting potential political nominees for medical conditions. Sotomayor has Type One diabetes.

“It is obligatory [to look at this]” said Jeffrey Toobin, a legal analyst for CNN and author of “The Nine: Inside The Secret World of the Supreme Court.” “The issue of duration of service for a Supreme Court nominee is critical to any president, and thus health and medical issues are very much at the forefront of their considerations… It would be irresponsible for any president not to make the health of the nominee a major subject of concern, because presidents want decades of service from their nominees.”

Stein says few, if any, in the medical profession view Sotomayor’s diabetes as a “major disqualifier,” but says many experts say “there is a stigma attached to Type One diabetes that doesn’t exist with other conditions.” Experts say advances in diabetes care over the past two decades have dramatically improved prospects for quality of life and longevity, although complications can be significant.

Earlier post here.

See also:

Analyzing Jeff Rosen’s article about Sotomayor in the New Republic, the Wonkette website describes Sotomayor as “an annoying retard.”

From the New York Daily News, The New Republic:

Sonia Sotomayor, a New York federal judge who is widely believed to be on the short list for a Supreme Court nomination, has said her childhood diagnosis of diabetes was instrumental in her decision to become a lawyer.

Speaking to the New York Daily News in 1998, Sotomayor said she first aspired to become a detective like the heroine of the Nancy Drew books. But then …

At age 8, she was diagnosed with diabetes and was told detective work wasn’t in the cards.

“I became very disappointed about not having a life plan,” she told The News. “At the time, ‘Perry Mason’ had become a very popular show, and I loved Perry Mason. If I couldn’t do detective work as a police officer, I could do it as a lawyer.”

(Photo from New York Daily News)

From AP/Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

A suburban Chicago man with disabilities, whose February 26 assisted suicide plans were put on hold after the Final Exit Network arrests last month, says he has found a new reason to live: defending the right-to-die movement.

Kurt Perry, 26, is diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT), described as a painful inherited neurological disorder that weakens his limbs and breathing. The Charcot-Marie-Tooth Association says the condition usually isn’t life-threatening.

In an interview, Final Exit founder Ted Goodwin defended his group’s right to hasten the deaths of people who are chronically ill, as well as those who are terminally ill.

Disability rights advocate Stephen Drake, of the group Not Dead Yet, countered that assisted suicide sends the message that certain people are expendable. “What you’ve done is you’re saying that group of people, their lives have less value,” Drake said.

Earlier post here.

(Chicago Tribune photo)