Have you been checking out the blogs on my blogroll? Have you been reading Single Dad, Disabled Daughter? Because if not, you should. I've learned much about issues affecting the disabled and their families.
Single Dad's daughter, "Pearlsky," is, in his words, "messed up." She can't control her muscle movements, she can't talk, she can't always see, she can't communicate in any way. Based on when she laughs and how she responds to stimuli in her environment, her team of caretakers and therapists think that she probably has the mental capacity of a child of six or seven (she's actually sixteen), but they can't be sure. She has siezures a lot. Her body doesn't produce a certain amino acid, and if she doesn't get it as a supplement twice a day, she'll die.
As you can imagine, in addition to being the benificiary of many generous and sensitive people and systems, Single Dad also puts up with a lot of crap in his life from many people and systems -- sometimes the same ones. I want to share an exchange in which I participated recently in his comments section, because I think the response to my comment was funny:
Never in my life have a seen one man surrounded by so much idiocy.
Never.
Kenneth-
Based on the experience of my mom, who is chronically ill, the issue is that there’s a certain amount (let’s call it X) of idiocy in health-care systems, and the more chronic your need for help from that system, the more of X you will witness. Also, the more time and motivation you will have to complain about X.
People whose needs for help are acute, not chronic, might witness some idiocy, but either not realize how big X really is, or “let it go” because once their problem is resolved, they don’t feel a need to invest any emotional energy in fixing it.
My compliments to Sarah for stating the relative ratio of known idiocy.
Can we make "relative ratio of known idiocy" a regular part of the English language? Because I think that is awesome.
