Truth and Reality as I know it to be

Posts tagged ‘wheelchair’

Need-Based Humiliation Bureaucracies

6 months into 2013, and I am still writing 2012. Can’t deny there’s an exceptional disdain for this year. Maybe I should start writing “2014,” so then I can feel like I have a head start on the good times. Cursed odd numbered years. 9/11/11, the Revolutionary War, Civil War and WWII began and ended in odd numbered years. Nothing good ever happens (for me) in odd numbered years. I was born in an odd numbered year. Surely that had to be painful. That’s a joke. Laugh, damnit.

In the beginning it was strange reading reports about me. Especially when I was a child.

It was strange writing in the third person when I started the new wheelchair ordeal. I’m becoming well versed with writing prognosis reports about myself in the third person to justify my disabilities as bureaucrats review my case history, and my lifestyle while expecting me to put my life on hold. “How come you can’t use a walker instead of a wheelchair?” Maybe I AM using a walker while your bureaucratic processes piss away over 2 years of MY abbreviated livelihood, wasting tax dollars for things spent my 20s being independent from BECAUSE I have to resort to using a walker. Here I am, writing thesis, documentation full of nice sounding buzzwords, helping medical professionals establish medical need on my behalf in the stupid reports with ICD9s, HCPCs, and K codes about how I try to live my life (MRADLs) and do things like chase my walker at the gym, almost fall as I chase and if I was half a second slower or had lost my balance… my walker would have been in a 10 foot swimming pool AND I’d have a concussion making it hard for me to write in the third person. If I talk in the third person, someone seek help for me. Maybe by then someone can add mentally unstable to the list and someone else can do this advocacy thing for me.

I really want to unleash a string of profanity. As this goes on I am increasingly tempted to explore the options to file lawsuit for prolonged indifference and malicious intent and abuse/neglect of process. I have no idea who I would file a claim against since there are so many incompetencies from so many involved. Over 2 years, I could have had 2 kids by now. I could be half finished with school. I could have lost weight, or gained weight, or I my medical needs could have changed by now making the wheelchair totally wrong for my needs by now.

I’m honestly describing in a page, the hardship of opening a door, another about how every time I cross the street I have anxiety attacks for fear of being hit because I might trip in the cross walk, and then not have enough time to continue to the other side before the light changes… about how I am easily jostled and causes me to lose my balance in public, how I have the smallest walker I could possibly find and it still does not fit to take it down the new-ish versions of the 1960’s-inspired-style buses with seats that face forward. Good luck if the bus is filled with people in those seats. Should I share the embarrassment I’m subject to at needing to descend the bus backwards because I can’t lift the walker high enough for long enough over the gap between the bus and the sidewalk curb? These bureaucracies for social institutions are designed to humiliate those needing help under a guise of processes for need-based programs. Need-to-humiliate-before-willing-to-consider-helping-you bureaucracies. Regular people don’t have files about how they open doors, take a piss, shower, feed/eat. What gives bureaucracies the right to strip people of dignity and self-respect? How is that NOT being treated like a second-rate person? I beseech, why does the U.N. want to adopt a People with Disabilities Treaty/Convention to apply to their own creed/treaty for so many nations to legally treat people with disabilities in such revolting fashion? Why is the Republican party not flattered that the U.N. wants to model a treaty based on what the U.S.A has? We could speculate the reason being fear the U.N. would see past the dog and pony show.

What private details of my life do they NOT want? Should I just write a biography of every activity I do? Thoreau-style? What a terrible bore. I’m sure Civil Disobedience is worthwhile if he didn’t spew about it in such a dry fashion.  I’ve been boring myself assembling it all. And then to even think of the slightest possibility it could be misused and then turned into some required college or high school reading after I cease to exist, and there’s no reader autonomy.

Can’t tell you how much I really want a cigarette right now. Breathe deep. Baaaagh, just reminded me of how good I felt to take a big drag when stressed. No, no, no. I have been doing good. Don’t surrender to weakness.

ADMC stage to fight for a new manual wheelchair




 Dr. writes prescription, sends to vendor



 Vendor takes measurements, writes quote.


Vendor corrects the sloppy order written



     ADMC stage


What is your strength in your upper extremities?





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