Is fighting a serious illness or recovering from a major injury mutually exclusive with being a professor? Trends in academic employment and societal attitudes toward disability answer that question with a resounding yes. This disturbing state of affairs will continue until people develop ways to accommodate the "hidden" disability of serious illness or injury to the realities of academic life. Illness and injury are inescapable realities of human life. Sooner or later, they touch everyone, and their impact on academic careers is devastating. This article outlines the problem, relying mainly on anecdotal evidence. Since institutions and attitudes impose cruel choices on faculty with hidden disabilities, the author describes what institutions should do to help these faculty to sustain their work and careers.