San Diego Should’ve Been a Haven for My Health — But Climate Change Had Other Ideas

Rebuild, Relocate, Rethink: What Happens to Our Homes in a Changing Climate examines how climate change intersects with our homes and the way we live. Check out the stories here.

In 2015, when I was 25, I fell about 25 feet out of a Redwood tree in Santa Cruz, California. The fall landed me in a 10-day coma with a severe traumatic brain injury, and I ended up permanently disabled. 

I had an idea of what I’d have to deal with as a newly disabled person, based on the experiences of my disabled friends and extended family members, such as accessible accommodations (which they felt were lacking) and negative public perception. Never would I have imagined that one of the biggest problems I’d struggle with was the weather. 

What followed was a maelstrom of navigating health care access through a cross-country move, trying to find a place on the East Coast where the weather didn’t exacerbate my disability, and finally a move back to San Diego in the hope I’d return to a climate that agreed with my body. But climate change took my temperate haven away.

Because the accident happened in coastal California, where temperatures rarely reach extremes, I never experienced weather outside of the 60- to 70-degree range after my release from the hospital.

I was dealing with poor body temperature regulation, diplopia (double vision), and poor fine motor skills, alongside ambulation (walking), balance, and cognitive issues. No one on my medical team brought up the fact that this body-temperature regulation issue could be exacerbated by extra-bodily factors like the climate because, again, we were in California. Why would it?

After about four months of outpatient rehabilitation, I finished my undergrad degree and aged out of my dad’s military insurance a week after undergoing an eye-muscle surgery to correct my diplopia. When a doctor I began seeing with my new Medicare insurance told me someone in my condition needed a more robust care team my insurance would not be able to provide, I applied to graduate school in order to access better health care.

Previously, I had actually never considered grad school, but my options were limited. My job as a seasonal production associate in San Diego (that I took a train to get to) would be over after the season ended — and in the lurch between my parent’s health insurance lapsing and unemployment, I wasn’t going to be able to afford private health insurance. Even if I were able to secure full-time employment, health insurance would not likely be offered right away, and I needed care from day one.

Plus, because I could secure loans for grad school it was more accessible to me in the immediate moment, and I was able to pay back those loans (about $40,000) during the pandemic when interest rates on loans were cancelled.

Considering the Center for Disease Control estimates 28.7% of the U.S. population has a disability, I can safely assume I’m not alone in experiencing some form of this bind — whether it be from aging out, working a job without access to health care, being offered inadequate health care options when they are available, having a disability considered “pre-existing,” or one of the other many reasons around 8% of the U.S. population lacks health insurance. I accepted my spot at Emerson College’s master’s program in Publishing and Writing, and moved to Boston. 

As soon as fall kicked into full swing in Boston — with temperatures dropping to 2 degrees Fahrenheit — the weather proved a problem. Because of my poor balance and my affected left side (my left leg doesn’t bend well and I tend to drag it when I walk), I often fell down on slick sidewalks whenever it rained. A few weeks later, ice led to the same problem. Entering and exiting Boston’s subway stations became an event. It was as soon as the temperature dipped below 40 degrees, the swelling started — my fingers looked like misshapen sausages.

It didn’t even occur to me it had to do with the cold outside. Immediately, I went to Tufts Medical Center and got X-rays, thinking I may have fractured my fingers. The scans came back clean. Everyone was puzzled. 

Then the “Historic Bomb Cyclone” of January 2018 hit — an event which resulted in at least 21 fatalities. The swelling in my hands was unbearable. I knew something was wrong, and I knew that the doctors couldn’t figure it out.

This isn’t an uncommon phenomenon — research shows that about 795,000 U.S. citizens die or are permanently disabled by diagnostic error each year across all clinical settings. That doesn’t even cover the non-life threatening misdiagnoses. Six months of inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation taught me the ins and outs of my condition, and yet, new symptoms continued to present that I had to fight to make sense of. 

But whether you know you have a condition or not, extreme weather can exacerbate it. The Environmental Protection Agency says that “increases in average and extreme temperatures and heat waves are expected to lead to more heat illnesses and deaths among vulnerable groups.”

Eventually, I was sent to a neurologist who determined I probably had neuropathy and stated there wasn’t much they could do. But I felt better. At least I knew my swelling wasn’t indicative of something more nefarious. I bought compression gloves (usually used for arthritis) and continued on with my life — avoiding the outdoors on cold days when I could, using a heater when I had to type, and soaking my hands in hot water on the truly awful days. 

Then, COVID-19 happened. I moved to Brooklyn for a year. I wanted to quarantine with people I knew, my job was remote, and I thought a move farther south would be good for my joints — Brooklyn tends to be at least 5 degrees warmer than Boston and, after all, my main vocations involve typing. 

One winter in the borough taught me that I wasn’t far enough south to make a substantial impact on my joints. Paired with no end in sight for the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided if I was going to be trapped inside working multiple jobs, it should at least be somewhere my hands operated well.

I saved a lot of money that year from working multiple jobs and living with roommates. Because of this and historically low mortgage rates, my family and I agreed to co-purchase a duplex in North County San Diego, where we’re from, with the idea I’d live in one half and we’d rent out the other. 

It was a good solution. San Diego has an average temperature year-round of 67 degrees. I knew that the cold was making my joints nearly impossible to work with, and the summer highs kept me inside to avoid heat-induced nausea and vomiting. There would be no better time to try to improve my circumstances — even if San Diego wasn’t going to be perfect — because it’s temperate year-round.

Unfortunately, my disability also makes it so I can’t drive, and North County San Diego is built on sprawl. But moving back to the area was the right tradeoff for a year-round temperate climate. I moved back, and I accepted that my world had become smaller but my body would have better conditions.

And then winter — real winter — came. It was a winter so cold and unlike any I had ever experienced before in San Diego. There was no snow, but the swelling reminded me of being back in the place I had left behind. I didn’t keep track of the number of days I had to use voice-to-text instead of manually typing as I warmed my hands near my mini-heater, but it was enough to make me wonder if San Diego was the right choice for me.

In the first weeks of December 2021, I awoke to swollen hands and an outdoor temperature of 38 degrees, a mere 3 degrees warmer than the lowest-ever recorded temperature for the area. The rest of winter, and well into spring, I experienced the same swelling on and off. It’s been almost four years since then, and the extreme temperatures remain, as does my body’s reaction to them.

I moved to San Diego to have a better, more comfortable life, and yet — just like in Boston and Brooklyn — I still struggle with swelling for about half of the year, which I mitigate with my arthritis gloves and a mini-heater by my desk. During the other half of the year I avoid the unforeseen higher temperatures — Oceanside Harbor, a town in North County San Diego, reached a record-breaking 98 degrees in 2022 — by staying inside and taking heat-resistance precautions.

Research is still determining whether or not the increasing intensity of these cold snaps, even if the climate is generally getting warmer, has to do with global warming, even if it feels counterintuitive. And there’s no doubt that San Diego summers have been getting measurably hotter and hotter. Non-disabled bodies acclimate in a way some disabled bodies can’t, which means these weather changes are reported as trends rather than “weather events” or “disasters” — the toll of the day-to-day effects of climate are overlooked until there are casualties. I don’t have ice to slip on, which is nice, but one of the main reasons I returned to San Diego is gone.

I don’t venture outside for long periods because the conditions have made it inaccessible for me to do so. And soon, even inside won’t be safe due to power outages and water shortages. Ironically, although I consider weather to be one of my biggest adversaries when it comes to my disabled body, climate change is a man-made problem — yet again, it’s people and subpar policies creating an inaccessible world for disabled people.