I had not set out to be a radical for anything other than mental health, but as of today I am forced to become a radical for something called “handicapped inclusion.” I walk with a cane because I have what I have come to realize is a familial peripheral neuropathy. It is quite benign and won’t kill me. I know it is possible to avoid a wheelchair because my mother and grandmother did that I do fight tooth and nail to move around the best I can, and build strength and such with both exercise and nutrition.
When a doctor told me once I needed disability and a wheelchair, I yelled Holy Hell at him and explained that I practice medicine with my head and not with my feet. I am still practicing, but I have no plans for competitive athletics in the near future. I do dance every chance I get, as you may have seen a video on one of my social media sites. Today I am at the DMV where they put me in the “handicapped” line, thus rushing me to an area with “standing desks,” where my husband had to fill out my application for an ID card because the ONE thing that is sometimes hard for me to do is-standing.
I see the instructions for “handicapped inclusion” are written by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Government). I am worried because after my research on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I found the CDC write-up and it seemed to me that that with their new criteria, less people had the problem so it sounded like a less serious one. Was this propaganda? Who can tell? There is lots of stuff available about including students with disabilities in the classroom.
A classroom has got to be one of the most controlled human environments on earth. Contrary-wise (as Humpty Dumpty told Alice), the Department of Motor Vehicles office has got to be one of the poorest-controlled human environments on earth. I suggest neophytes (which some people I have known in the field call “TABS” or “Temporary Able-bodies,” since we all start as babies and end as needing some kind of care) start by directing some of the obviously confused people if you know how (not all handicaps are visible) or at least smiling at people in walkers or wheelchairs. Or with a cane, like me.
Filed under life, Mental Illness, News by on May 10th, 2019. Comment. 
It is cold and rainy outside. Neither of those factored into our choice of Southern California as home. I figured out early on, sometime in prep school, that every science had it own jargon and seemed full of contradictions. By the 8th grade I had pretty much decided that science was the “rowing toward God” that the great (Boston) poetess Anne Sexton was talking about.
It is a way to find the truth, and science is very hard work, indeed. I had figured out that I would never get a handle on more than a tiny corner of it.
Life science (and later, medicine) seemed an accessible corner of the infinite entity, so I grudgingly accepted a sort of amateur status in the remainder of science. It seemed that even if I spent every waking hour reading, I could never learn enough science. I actually envied Leonardo da Vinci, because in his day, it had been possible for one man to know pretty much everything of the science that was known in all the world. This is why, by the 8th grade, I spent every free moment curled up in one of the window seats of the library at prep school reading the “Scientific American”. Sometimes I would visit scientists at local universities, calling them after I read their work. My parents encouraged me to do this. They seemed like decent, hardworking guys (no women then) amused by having as a fan a girl such as I. One day I went near-hysterical on the streets of Harvard Square when I recognized James Watson (of Watson-Crick double helix fame) wearing a bright blue suit which I gushingly told him was my favorite color.
So I still often go to “Scientific American” to resolve science that is not medicine. The link above will link to a plethora of sources that will help any rational people understand how it being dreadfully cold out, even in California, does not contradict, but actually supports global warming.
Of course I am temporarily freezing in my humble abode and can only turn up my fossil-fuel generated heat, thereby making things worse in the long term, although comfortable in the short term. This has nothing I can see to do with either religion or politics. Religion reveals to us only truths we are capable of understanding. God is Not Dumb. If he had put something about this in the Ten Commandments, nobody could have done much about it anyway. Now, divine means are more subtle, I think. This woman deserves sainthood or the equivalent. Just follow science to find truth. Other roads may simply be too confusing emotional and therefore, misleading.
Filed under Education, Family, News, politics, Religion, Religion and Politics by on May 13th, 2019. Comment.