THE TRIALS OF ST TIMMY'S 36
=================================================================
THE TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S --
The Continued Saga of Paul Ess's Rehabilitation
=================================================================
In today's news of obnoxious old farts, they took Mr Salazar off
the $30,000 glass bead bed. He's still in a back room with no
one else. Who else could stand him with all that roaring he
does? If there were cosmic justice, they would put Buzzard in
with him and let them holler each other to death. Linda was
feeding Buzzard the other evening and he was hollering HELP!
HELP! HELP! YOU SONOFABITCHES! all through the meal. He's gone
in the cranium and has the sense of a broken Edison cylinder
which he probably predates.
I found this in another usenet group. By the way, this is
episode 36.
Sat, 17 Aug 1996 15:54:04 misc.handicap
Subj: Support Groups and/or Resources for Recently
No responses
We're looking for all kinds of general support and resources
for the *RECENTLY* disabled. Close to a year ago, my wife was
told (basically), "Gee, you're disabled. You'll never walk or
work again. You are not a candidate for knee or limb
replacement. See ya 'round."
We have looked all over the area for a support group, or
something that can tell you: (or at least point you in the right
direction)
1) How to deal with this! (psychologically).
[The staff shrink at the big city hospital about poisoned me with
Prozac. Some how-to-deal-with-it-therapy!]
2) How the husband deals with it! Much greater demands on
time. Tremendous cost with tremendous loss of income.
It seems like it should almost be a "grief" support
group --- something that deals with "loss."
[When you haven't got a spouse and you call in your best friend
because you don't know who else to call when they tell you you
are a lot sicker than you think you are, there ought to be some
support for that friend. It has bothered me long and often that
I haven't been able to do anything to help Mr Cheez and Kooky
deal with this. I can't think it's any joy having a bitchy queen
friend made suddenly into a gimpy bitchy queen friend. Mr Cheez
won't admit a thing, but I've seen the hurt look in his eyes a
couple of times when things didn't go the way he expected them to
go.]
3) What kind of assistive aids are available? What's
needed? How do you "shop" --- when you do find one, or two
within a 100 miles. They all have their own vested interests and
profits to serve.
[Everybody connected with my gimp journey has had an agenda and
vested interest and their own profit to serve.]
4) Why doesn't the hospital provide a 1-2-3 check list:
[Why not, indeed?]
a) Occupational therapy
b) Pscych counselling, encouraging, support
[They farmed me out to The ERR for (a) and (b). Both were less
than helpful or pleasant. Both benefitted the caregivers's
pockets far more than any intrinsic benefit to me.]
c) Get you involved in a group with similar patients.
[At no time have I had meaningful contact with fellow gimps
except a limited amount through email. I've been told that the
only way to really learn how to live as a less-than-normal is to
learn the trucks from one who already knows them -- that an
occupational therapist doesn't know much because he or she
doesn't live the gimp life. And I recently saw a program for
gimps on teevee which conclusively proved it is gimps themselves
who invent and implement adaptive equipment!]
d) Set you up with a visit from your nearest Super
HealthStore, or whatever.
[I was never given the opportunity to choose from a variety of
adaptive equipment and living aids. In many cases, I was
presented with a device and told Here: Use it. If it wasn't
adequate for my needs or style, I was made to feel I was the
inadequate one.]
e) A physical therapy engineer visit the home and make
suggestions (and again resources to build a wheel
chair ramp, changes in the kitchen, etc. Stair
lifts?
[This is moot unless and until I latch onto an ADA-compliant
place to live. As it is, I had no cooperation from my landlord
in adapting his building to my needs. He talked a great line but
it all turn out to be smoke up my ass. I wasted a lot of money
holding on to that apartment during my early convalescence. I
had the intent to return where I lived and resume my lifestyle
with only necessary changes.]
f) A PT evaluation of your physical needs. Were you an
active person? Do you have partners, friends to get
you out? or do you need to have more independent
mobility aids. Someone to give you the proper 'mind
set' to avoid sticker shock when
you start shopping for power chairs, vans, etc.
[I know what the sticker shock it. The prices for this equipment
are outrageous and calculated to gore insurance companies. If
your insurance company won't pay for it and you are not well-
heeled, you are fucked.]
g) Are there any tax breaks for disabled?
[Good question. I have the feeling many gimps earn a subrosa
living they don't report because equipment maintenance can be
expensive and out-of-pocket. It may be necessary to break the
law in order to survive.]
h) What about the Social Security Disability nightmare?
Do you have a local advocate? or do you have to have
a lawyer after the first and second rejection?
[I get to find out in my own case come next February.]
I know most of you have 'been there' - but it seems so
overwhelming and there doesn't seem to be *any* place to turn
locally.
Certainly this newsgroup goes a long way - but there really
needs to be something on the local level, too. Someone you can
pick up the phone and get an answer --- someone you can talk to
when you're bursting in tears after visiting the Rehabilitation
Therapy people to find out what's available, what do I need,
what's the price ---and they tell you, "O well you need to make
some of those decisions? What are you looking for?" Or after
you spend 3-4 weeks to order ("Sorry, we don't keep that one in
stock; It's our most popular model.") just the right model
walker. The one they tell you on the phone has pressure brakes
... so now it's in ... you finally arrange a ride to get to the
next state to pick it up .. and find it only has caliper brakes
on the handle and you're arthritis won't allow you to use them.
Forgive me if this sounds like I'm venting, or angry, or
bitter. I am, of course, but don't mean to sound like it. Just
seriously looking for some type of support.
* * * * *
Mr Nehru down the hall was blasting his television, so I went
over there to tell him to turn that shit off til I saw what it
was. He was running a videotape of The Sound of Music. It was
at the part where the cute telegram delivery boy sings and I was
stricken with a good case of the hots. So I was nice and didn't
yell at the dothead.
But I heard something else which needed my expert investigation.
Mr Salazar, who was taken out of the compressed-air bed a couple
of days ago, appeared to be about ready to fall out of this
conventional one. He had one super long leg up in the air, an
arm hanging out, and his head way off the pillow and turned
toward me. His eyes were closed and his mouth wide open in the
inimitable old-tard-catching-flies pose.
His breathing was quite loud and congested. I noted they had a
suction machine in there. I thought to myself, He won't be with
us much longer. Later in the evening I saw nurses skulking up
and down the hall with plastic bags. I hadn't heard the old boy
groaning and singing for quite some time. The charge nurse came
back up the hall pushing one of those tube feeding pumps on an IV
stand. They don't routinely remove those from a room because you
don't get off of a GI tube until-- Then it clicked: He's
croaked. A look in his room this morning confirmed my
suspicions. Nobody home anymore. I wonder if they called the
same fat queen undertaker with the monster tits we had so grimly
reap at The ERR...
Mr Cheez came by today with all my mail, two letters. Oh, well,
it was nice to hear from a non-net dude who hasn't written in
weeks and weeks. Another fellow I'd like to hear from used to
seem quite interested in my predicament. When he found out I was
still not living independently, I think he gave up on me. Kewl.
What if _I_ gave up on me?
After my whipping his ass at dominoes, Mr Cheez went to KFC to
get lunch. Ah! Real foooood. I had crispy dead bird strips
with mustard sauce, and cole slaw to keep it from congealing.
KFC macaroni and cheese is certainly not homemade, but it beats
the pasty, starchy-tasting blob served up here as such.
Meanwhile, nursey brought my noon meal tray. The Polish kielbasa
wasn't bad but the saurkraut (canned) with it had been thickened
by the cook again. He wanked into this the way he does the beets
and the apricots.
Mr Cheez took a bite of the kraut and immediately spit it out. I
get the feeling he doesn't appreciate the cooking here, and I
wonder why... It left such a bad taste in his mouth he had to
get out his little pipe and do a bowl. About this time, George
came out to smoke. George says, The pipe, the pipe. Mr Cheez
chuckled. I grinned like an idiot. George says, The mary wana,
the mary wana. Yeah, says Mr Cheez, You want some, George?
George toked. George held it in real good. George was happy the
rest of the afternoon. Mr Cheez must've got pretty fucked up.
Maybe this is howcome after lunch and more dominoes, he creamed
my ass but good! (Let's clarify that: He creamed my ass at
dominoes.)
Jenny is a nice old lady of 87 down the hall. She has a kewl
roommate who seems young for 91. Olivia has horn rim glasses
which are way big for her face. She peers at you like a wise
owl. Jenny never complains about anything. She's probably the
most untasteless person in the place. Her daughter and son-in-
law visit about twice a week. They bring her other child, a son,
with them.
The son, I swear, is whose picture you see when you look in the
dictionary under 'retard'. Can you imagine a 70-plus old man
with that tard look in his eyes and absolutely _no_ chin?
He shuffles along behind the rest like a zombie. He doesn't make
any sense at all when he tries to talk. What a crutch to bear
for Jenny. On Good Morning America they had this family from
Florida whose autistic spawn fell in a bog and was in danger for
four days of becoming alligator lunch. He had that same vacant
look. I guess the reason the alligators didn't eat him is they
want people of good taste and not just people who might taste
good.
There's a new man in where The Chink used to be. This one is a
garden-variety European whitebread but he had the teevee on an
independent ethnic channel with the Indian/Paki music videos
going. I held my hand mirror around the corner so the squally,
wobbly cutting voice of some Hindu screen goddess could etch a
pattern for me.
Queen Bee is still reigning supreme. She finally brought her son
in to see me. He has the kewlest Canon laptop computer to carry
around with him on his consulting job. He has custom software in
it commissioned by his company. The software is a tailored
database for keeping customers's machinery data at hand. The
problem with it is the person who used this computer before he
did. The guy didn't know jack about computers and got Windows
all fucked up. So I amazed him by arranging all his icons and
sizing all his windows for minimum dicking around with the track
ball. He was duly and truly impressed, and Queen Bee perched on
my bed just beaming at "her boys" like she had good sense (which
she does most of the time). This model Canon has a built-in
flatbed inkjet printer. The whole package works as slick as snot
on a doorknob and I want one!
================================================================= (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/disco/3645/dakween) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/disco/3645) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip/disco) (
geocities.com/sunsetstrip)