Just thought I'd post this here so you can see what has kept me so busy!
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“Sticks and stones may break your bones but names can never harm you.” How many of us heard that when we were kids? How many of us had our feelings hurt when called names? It’s been my experience that sticks, stones and soapboxes in speech class may break my bones and being called names hurts a hell of a lot.
We’ve entered the age of political correctness – as adults we try to watch what we say, avoiding anything that may be offensive to people of different genders, sexual orientations, races, nationalities, religions and abilities, to name a few. Most of the world seems to be trying not to offend anyone – with one large exception. There is very little political correctness surrounding mentally illness.
People use words like, crazy, whacko, nuts, psycho, schizo, emo and loony bin, without really thinking about it. The Encarta Dictionary indicates that “crazy” is “an offensive term for someone with a psychiatric disorder.” Key concept – at least one dictionary identifies this term as offensive, yet we use it every day. I know that I do and I should know better. For one thing, I worked for 19 years at a mental health center and have a Master’s in Psychology. But I am also mentally ill – have been since my early 20’s. I have bipolar disorder, considered one of the major mental illnesses, so I guess officially I’m a crazy person who has been in the loony bin dozens of times. But this speech isn’t about me – it’s about the stigma attached to being like me – mentally ill.
A stigma is defined as “the shame or disgrace attached to something regarded as socially unacceptable.” According to an article written by the staff of the Mayo Clinic there are four components to a stigma: “labeling someone with a condition, stereotyping people who have that condition, creating a division – a superior ‘us’ group and a devalued ‘them’ group, and discriminating against someone on the basis of their label.” There is undeniably a stigma to being mentally ill. With the glaring exception of HIV and AIDS, there is very little stigma to being physically ill. There are no derogatory terms or jokes about having cancer – we don’t call a person who has lost all their hair due to treatments, “baldy.” Yet we’ll call someone with schizophrenia a “schizo.”
It certainly isn’t because people with mental illnesses are in the vast minority. According to the National Institute of Mental Health’s website, an estimated 26% of Americans – approximately one in every four – have a diagnosable mental illness in a given year – this translates into almost 60 million people. According the Surgeon General’s report on mental illness published in 1999, approximately one in five Americans will have a diagnosable mental illness in their lifetime.
So what causes this many people to be the brunt of jokes? One reason might be that the jokes about mental illness are funny. According to the National Stigma Clearinghouse as reported in an article by James Willwerth in Time magazine, one clothing store used a picture of a man in a straitjacket in their ads. Their slogan was, “If you paid more than $100 for a dress shirt, might we suggest a jacket for you?” I don't know about you, but I find that rather funny. Unfortunately, mental illness is far from funny – not to the people who have it and not to the loved ones of those people.
Stigma actually goes further than just the jokes, though. There seems to be a wide-spread lack of understanding about what mental illness is and what causes it. The same article from the Mayo Clinic website states that mental illness has complex causes relating to brain chemistry, genetics and life circumstances – none of which are generally in a person’s control. Yet there is a generally held belief that the person with mental illness is somehow to blame – that they are in control of their disorder. This belief is seldom held about a physical illness. How many people would tell someone with diabetes to “just snap out of it?”
Another factor, relating to this lack of understanding, is the fear factor. People are afraid of people with mental illness. A report from the Department of Justice as cited in an article by Carolyn Gard in Current Health extracted from the Daytona State College database shows that just 1.5% of all assaults committed during a 10 year period were committed by persons with mental illness. Another report states that just 11% of mentally ill persons are prone to violence, roughly the same as the general population. Yet the fear persists. A study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania was reported in the article by James Willwerth. They found that despite the statistic of actual violence by mentally ill persons, approximately 70% of all portrayals of mental illness on television and movies show that person to be violent.
So we come to the real culprit – the media. Actually, the misconceptions about mental illness have a much longer history than can be attributed to the media, but in a day and age where so much more is known about the causes of mental illness and the treatment of mental illness is so much more effective, the media is certainly guilty of perpetuating the stereotype. And the news media is not exempt.
For example, how many of you were aware that in October of this year, Congress passed a law relating to the equal treatment of mental illness by health insurance companies? Now, how many were aware that the gunman in the Virginia Tech shootings had a history of mental illness? That is what makes the news – those relatively rare instances where someone with a mental illness commits a violent crime.
Aside from the general wrongness of the stigma of mental illness, there are more serious implications. It was reported by The Carter Center, a human rights organization in Atlanta and cited in the article by Carolyn Gard that while 90% of people with mental illnesses would benefit from treatment with medications, only 30% actually receive that treatment for fear of being labeled as mentally ill, for fear of being stigmatized as a result. It is likely, then, that those relatively few people with mental illness who commit violent acts are not receiving treatment at the time of their crime. Again, the Virginia Tech shooter is a prime example, as is Andrea Yates who drowned her five children after being diagnosed with post-partum psychosis, but discontinuing treatment.
When people with mental illness refuse to seek treatment for fear of the stigma surrounding it, they often are unable to maintain employment, particularly if the disorder is one of the serious mental illness. The result can ultimately lead to homelessness. A report by the National Coalition for the Homeless reports that 16% of homeless individuals have a mental illness. Certainly the lack of funding and misuse of funds for community based treatment for the mentally ill has exacerbated the problem, but I feel that stigma has played a much larger role.
When persons with mental illness are not receiving treatment and are perhaps homeless, they often end up in jail, usually for non-violent crimes, such as disturbing the peace or failing to pay for a meal. It was reported in an article published in the magazine America extracted from the Daytona State College database that there are between 200,000 and 300,000 people with mental illness in jail at any given time. While in jail, they receive little or no treatment, are the victims of abuse by fellow inmates, and are eventually released to the same environment that led to their incarceration in the first place.
Worse than discrimination, worse than homelessness, worse than jail, however, is the number of persons with mental illness that commit suicide. About five years ago, my niece made several calls to me about her brother-in-law. When she described his behavior, it was obvious to me that this young man was experiencing symptoms of a psychotic episode. He was delusional – convinced that people were spying on him through the television cable, that people were following him on the highway. He needed treatment, desperately, but he refused, stating repeatedly that he was not “crazy.” Finally, shortly before the birth of his first nephew, he took a gun and shot himself in the head, committing suicide in his family’s home rather than admit that he had a problem. That is the effect of stigma.
So what can be done? The answer begins with all of us. There needs to be an awareness of mental illness that goes beyond the stereotypes. If you haven’t already, take a psychology course and ask questions about mental illness. When you hear news about a person with mental illness or see a television show or movie with a character with mental illness, consider that the report or portrayal may be slanted and inaccurate. Remember the statistics – one out of every four people you meet probably has a mental illness, whether they are willing to talk about it or not. When you hear a joke about mental illness, or hear someone referred to as crazy or a whacko or a nut job, consider who might be offended by it but are just afraid to speak up for fear of being stigmatized because they or a loved one has a mental illness. When you are in a position to supervise other people, be the kind of supervisor that someone would be willing to divulge their mental illness to without fear of losing their job. Be the kind of friend that someone would be willing to divulge their problems to without fear of losing your friendship.
You may be wondering why I started this speech my admitting my own mental illness. While I primarily wanted to establish my credentials for talking about this topic, I guess I also wanted to put a face on mental illness. Aside from my tendency to fall off soapboxes and running the risk of squishing you, I’m a pretty harmless individual. In the not too distant past, I probably would have been “asked” by my family to live in the attic, not even coming down for meals – crazy old Aunty Karen who needed to be hidden away for fear of what the neighbors might think. Well, I believe that if we want to be let out of the attic, we have to first come out of the closet and admit to having a mental illness.
I’m still working on refining my stigma speech. I have to turn in a thesis statement on Monday, so I need to know what points I’m going to address. There are so many ways I could approach this. I also need to decide how much I should include from a personal standpoint. Do I tell this class that I’m bipolar? I think it would add to my credibility for discussing this topic, but I don’t want to make them uncomfortable. So many decisions, so little time, especially for someone who can agonize for hours over where to have lunch.
One of the points I think I should bring up is language, but I’m kind of reluctant to for fear of looking like I’m trying to make the class feel guilty. We all use words relating to mental illness in a somewhat derogatory manner. The words “crazy”, “insane” and “psycho” aren’t generally used to denote something positive. I’m just as guilty of this as the average person. We’ve become more sensitive as a society toward using slang toward race or nationality – except toward mental illness. I don’t know, though. I don’t really find these words offensive because I feel like they aren’t being applied to me or people like me. But that’s just me.
I think I should address the role the media plays in this stigma. There have been instances where a news report have bothered me a hell of a lot more than a fictional account of mental illness. One instance stands out for me – a woman accused a politician of sexual harassment, and when it was reported, it was pointed out that the woman had once been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons. It was presented in a way that seemed to discount anything she had to say, just because of this hospitalization. I have been hospitalized dozens of times – I would suppose that anything that I would have to say would be discounted.
Since I considered doing the whole speech on mental health parity, I guess it would be okay to at least mention it. Health insurance companies routinely either refuse to cover mental illnesses, or offer coverage very different from other physical illness, usually with higher co-pays and stricter limitations on services provided. Even Medicare has different limits for mental illnesses – there is a 190 day lifetime limit on inpatient days. Recently, Congress passed a law requiring health insurance companies to requiring more parity for coverage of mental illness but it’s a weak law. Medicaid and Medicare are exempt, insurance companies that don’t offer coverage for mental illness are exempt and it refers exclusively to annual and lifetime dollar limits. Also exempt are companies that have fewer than 50 employees, companies that are self-insured, and situations where it would result in an increase in premiums of more that 1%.
There is a huge cost to society to allow this stigma to continue. Because of it, a large percentage of people who would benefit from treatment are reluctant to seek services, resulting in missed time at work or leaving employment all together, increased taxes from people having to seek public assistance after losing their jobs and even loss of life. My niece’s brother-in-law was obviously suffering from a paranoid, psychotic mental illness. He would in all likelihood benefited greatly from treatment, especially medications. But he refused to seek treatment, saying repeatedly that he wasn’t “crazy.” Finally, he could not take the feeling of everyone being out to get him any longer – he fatally shot himself about 5 years ago.
Well, it was pretty helpful to blog about this. I certainly have a better idea of what I should write for my thesis statement. Now I need to find articles from reliable sources to support these arguments. I actually have several already – I just need a few more I think. And equally important, I think I feel a little better about the speech. I can do this, I think.
I think I’ve decided on the stigma of mental illness as a topic for my next speech. I’m not sure how to approach it, however – it’s supposed to be a persuasive speech and I need to determine what exactly I’m trying to persuade the audience to do or think. I thought I might use this blog to try to work some of this out by talking about my experiences with and thoughts about the attitudes people have about mental illness.
I’m actually fairly open about my experiences with mental illness. That may not be obvious from my blog since I don’t put my real name on it. I’m not sure why that is, but I think it has more with liking my “alter ego”, K’Jan the Dragonrider, better than I like the real me. Yet my writing is all about the real me. Go figure. Anyway, with people IRL, I really don’t go out of my way to hide my mental illness. I don’t announce it right off the bat or anything (“Hi, I’m Karen and I’m bipolar”) but if it comes up, I’ll talk about it.
This is my rationale for being open about it: I keep thinking about the idea of keeping crazy old Aunt Lydia up in the attic so people won’t know about how crazy she is. Well, if the mentally ill want to get out of the attic, we’ll have to come out of the closet. I understand that it’s not feasible for everyone to be so open – they may have too much to lose to take a chance on people’s attitudes. But where possible, we need to be willing to say, “Yeah, I’m mentally ill.”
So what has been my experience with this? Generally, on the surface and with most individuals, it has been pretty positive. I say, on the surface, because I don’t really know what people are thinking, but they don’t seem to treat me any differently once they know. There have been exceptions, though. In that situation, they didn’t reject me right away – it was later when I was going through a really tough time. One person actually lives across the street from me now. She used to be a friend, or so I thought, and now she won’t even return a friendly wave. I’ve stopped trying.
The biggest exception to this was when I lost my job in 2003. I worked at a mental health center for 19 years. My history of mental illness was not a secret when I was hired, but basically I did try to hide the effects when I went through periods of depression for as long as I could. Finally, in 1998, I went through a really rough time and was found out by a friend (one of the ones that is still a friend). I ended up in the hospital and eventually underwent a series of shock treatments. The mental health center was pretty supportive, allowing me to be off for as long as I needed (I had accumulated a ton of leave time). Over the next 5 years I was hospitalized a few more times and each time they appeared supportive.
In September 2002, my mom died and I guess it hit me harder than I thought it would. By November, I was severely depressed and suicidal. I decided that it was time to get serious and just end it all, so I bought a gun. Once I had the gun, I just locked it in the back of my car – in a gun bag, unloaded. There were a few times when I took it out, loaded it and sat with it trying to decide whether it was time. Obviously I decided it wasn’t. In December, I told someone I thought was a friend. I didn’t go into the conversation with the intent of telling her, but it came out. She was scared, which I fully understand and don’t blame her for calling another friend and my therapist. The bottom line, though, was all hell broke loose as a result.
I won’t go into all the details – maybe in another blog – but when I was released by my doctor to come back to work, I was told to report to an administrator’s office before reporting to work. That was when they fired me. One of the reasons was valid – I had violated the workplace violence policy by having the gun in my car. But they cited additional reasons that I feel were discriminatory. They stated that they could no longer accommodate my psychiatric disability, and that staff were scared of me. Pretty ironic coming from a mental health center, huh?
That was when a few of the people that I thought were friends distanced themselves from me. The thing is I think I can understand it – it was just too hard for them to deal with my down times. The same thing might have happened if I was diagnosed with cancer. So I can’t be sure that it was their attitude toward mental illness, but I think that there was an element of that. Despite working at a mental health center, they just didn’t understand what it meant to be mentally ill.
Maybe that’s one of areas I should focus on – the lack of understanding. There are so many people who would understand the diagnosis of cancer that would not understand the diagnosis of bipolar. When you get depressed, there are so many people who have this attitude of “snap out of it.” Would you tell someone with diabetes to “snap out of it?”
Well, I’m not sure I’m any closer to determining exactly how to approach the speech, but I feel like I’m at least working toward it. Lack of understanding is point number one. I have a lot more to go, though. The speech is 7 to 9 minutes. I have a feeling that I’ll be back to this blog soon.
Once again I sit here, thinking about all the things I should be doing and writing a blog instead. I decided to call blog writing “Physical Therapy” since it makes me use both hands – my left, the one hanging off the end of this broken arm, needs the exercise.
I went to the orthopedist yesterday – everything looks good on the x-ray and when they took the temporary cast off I could actually move my arm almost normally. He still wants it protected, so I have a short cast (it doesn’t immobilize the elbow). You can get them in different colors – I decided on black because it’s slimming (as in “does this cast make me look fat”). It will also go with my costume for the Medieval Yuletide Feast which is the first week in December. I’ll still be in a cast then – for opening night at least – so hot pink was out. My medieval dress is black and silver with long “bat” sleeves that are lined in silver satin. I can’t explain the sleeves; you’d just have to see them.
But I digress. The short cast lets me use all of my fingers again more or less. I have to hold my elbow out a bit, but I can almost type normally. Yea me. I haven’t been using the arm much, so I really need to give it some exercise and build up the muscles. I have another 4 weeks like this. Thus, it is good physical therapy for me to do a lot of typing, something my other tasks wouldn’t give me much of. Even the homework doesn’t involve a lot of typing, so my reasoning is sound and my excuse valid. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Now that I’ve spend three paragraphs blathering on about how I’m justified in writing this blog, what should I write this blog about? Actually, now that I think about it, I could actually combine this blog with some homework and elicit some help for my next speech. In a couple of weeks, I have to give a persuasive speech. It can be about just about anything, but I have to try to speak about something that I want people to do or believe or change or something like that. He gave us some criteria, but I’m too lazy to get up and look for it. Anyway, I’ve having trouble thinking of a topic. Some topics are off limits, mainly because he’s heard too many speeches about them, like abortion and drunk driving and smoking and drugs. So I need something that is “off the beaten track.”
A couple of ideas I’ve been toying with are (1) reducing the stigma of mental illness or (2) mental health parity. If you don’t know about the last one, it’s an attempt to get health insurance companies to stop discriminating against mental illness. A bill was just passed, but it’s a very weak one. I think I’d like to stick with mental health/illness as a theme, but I’m not sure how to narrow it down. What would I want people to do or believe as a result of my speech that they wouldn’t normally do or believe? I have to turn in a topic, purpose, thesis statement next Monday (or sooner) and also need to start doing the research, so if anyone reading this has any ideas at all, please feel free to leave a comment right away.
Well, on that note, I guess I really should try to get some homework done. For some reason, I’m having a motivational issue today – I’m only motivated to play with my computer or take a nap. I even had trouble staying focused at work (gasp!) where normally I’m all gung ho. Of course, now that I’ve increased my hours to 25 a week, there’s been a lull in the work – we just aren’t getting as many requests for help. I was actually bored for a while, until I came up with my own project to work on that the boss approved. So I’ve proven that I can move past this motivational problem if I try – now I just have to try with the homework thing. 
I decided to accept the college’s offer of more hours at work in lieu of compensation for the co-pays relating to my broken arm. They upped the ante – I’ll work 5 more hours a week this semester (all I can handle with the courses I’m taking), and will be “guaranteed” the position next semester at 30 hours a week. It was sort of up in the air whether they would have money for the position in the spring – now I know I have a job. The offer actually came from the head of IT department where I work – I think Risk Management may have called him – and he genuinely seemed to feel that it would be in everyone’s best interests if I accepted the offer. Since I knew that it would otherwise come down to lawyers and long drawn-out lawsuits, I agreed with him.
Several people have told me that it’s not fair that I should have to work harder/longer to pay for my medical bills when it was at least partially the college’s fault that I fell in the first place. Maybe. I’ve usually responded with “Life’s not really fair, now, is it?” But that got me thinking. Is life fair? Is it supposed to be? Is life but a dream and the hokey-pokey really what it’s all about? I guess it all depends on your philosophy of life, and I wondered about my own philosophy of life.
Well, I think Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid had the right of it – balance is the key to everything. It’s sort of like what Cicero said about moderation being your guide. They aren’t exactly the same – balance and moderation – but together I think they make up my philosophy of life. That would imply that I think life is in fact fair, that the good is balanced with the bad, and, in moderation, I think that’s true. There are some “bads”, like the Holocaust, that are just so excessive that it’s hard to find enough good to balance it, yet some people did. Read “Diary of Anne Frank” and Viktor Frankle’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” to get an idea of how people managed to find good in that horrible situation.
Maybe that’s all just a naïve, “Pollyann-ish” way of looking at things. Maybe. I’ll admit that during my darkest hours, I completely lose sight of this philosophy. I only see the bad – the good is lost in the miasma of depression. But right now, when I’m feeling more balanced, I find that I can find good to balance almost anything bad that has happened to me. Sure, I broke my arm because of the stupid soapbox in Speech class and now will have more bills to worry about. What can possibly be good about that? Well, I did get more hours at work to help balance that, working at a job I enjoy that can only look good on my resume. It also highlighted how much people care about me, something I can also lose sight of. My arm will eventually get better and I should get full use of it back in a month or so. The job and my friends will be around for much longer than that.
So, maybe life is in fact fair when you take the time to really look at it. For every opinionated, pain in the ass bastard you meet, think about all the good, kind, funny people you meet. For every bad thing that happens, think about what good has happened, or the people who will rally around you during the bad times. The balance doesn’t always happen right away – “maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday and soon” you will find the balance, find that life is fair, and discover that the hokey-pokey is really what it’s all about.
I dodged a bullet today. I thought I was going to give my Einstein speech today but there wasn’t enough time for all the speakers actually scheduled for today. Good thing. Watching the timer, I realized just how short 7 minutes is, so I timed my speech again – about 9 minutes. I had to scratch a few more things – some of it was fluff, but I had to scrap my segment about how much Einstein admired Gandhi, another of my personal heroes. Oh well.
Found out some interesting news however – apparently the college came to the class and took pictures of the infamous soapbox. I’m not sure why, but it makes me feel that the college is covering all its bases just in case I sue and probably trying to build a case for why they shouldn’t have to pay my medical bills. It’s sad, really, how litigious our society has become. I’m sure the college is thinking in terms of precedents it might set if they just pay my bills without a fight. They are probably afraid every person that falls on school property will expect the same and more – and they are probably right.
The main reason I think it’s sad that I may have to sue is that I won’t be able to limit the suit to medical expenses. The lawyers will expect something for their trouble – a percentage of the settlement. That means that we’ll have to sue for more than just the medical bills. How much easier it would be if they just settled with me instead of offering ludicrous solutions like having me work more hours to cover the costs myself.
The lawyers I contacted online haven’t called me back yet, assuming that they intend to call back at all. However, the lawyer that I talked to Sunday called the house while I was at school. I called back, but he had left for the day. I guess he’ll call me back tomorrow. I’m not sure what he’s calling about, but I think I’ll wait to respond to their offer of more hours until I hear from him, or hear from the other lawyers. The thing is still that I’d like more hours and the money for the co-pays, too, but I’m sure it won’t work out that way. I’ll probably be lucky if they don’t retaliate in some subtle way if I bring a lawyer into it. How? By eliminating the work study position for next semester, for one thing. They can also pass me over for any scholarships. In either case, I would be hard pressed to prove that it was retaliation.
I suppose I just need to take it day by day with this issue with the college. The important thing is to not let it get me stressed or depressed. I need to remind myself (and believe it) that I’m not an awful person for asking them to pay my co-pays. On that note, I’d better get to bed. Tomorrow is a long day and I have an exam tomorrow night that I’m not ready for. The only good thing about the exam is that I’ll probably get out early. Yea for me.
Einstein on Gandhi
Einstein on Nuclear Weapons
Video Clip of Einstein
I thought since I couldn't use them tomorrow, I'd put them here. They really are neat. Really.
I thought maybe if I write for a bit, it will take my mind off the two things most disturbing about a broken arm – the pain and the itching. I have pills that will help with the pain, although I try not to overdo them. Nothing helps with the itching, however. Right now I have what’s known as a soft cast on the arm – plaster splints held on with a ton of ace bandages. It’s not very comfortable, despite what its name implies – rather hot and uncomfortable actually. I have a little more than a week to go before I see the doctor again and he puts on regular cast. Then I have about another 6 to 8 weeks in a hard cast.
I broke down and talked to a lawyer today after church. It was an informal talk, more just to get the name of a lawyer who might be willing to represent me if it comes to that. Peyton, the lawyer I talked to, specializes in criminal defense, so this really isn’t his cup of tea. So when I got home, I filled out one of those on-line case evaluation forms for a local, all-purpose law firm. They should call me sometime tomorrow and let me know if they think I have a case against the college. I hate that it’s come to this, but I’m afraid that I’m going to get screwed if I don’t get a professional in my corner.
I spent the rest of the day napping and working on my Einstein speech. I have to give it in class tomorrow and I’m starting to get nervous. I’m not sure why, but I am. I mean, it’s really no big deal, right? But I’m giving the speech using a PowerPoint presentation and I’m not sure how I’m going to manage my papers and the control all with one hand. I’m also ticked off that the stupid version of PowerPoint that they’re using won’t play my audio or video files that I had originally embedded in it. I had found these really great sound files of Einstein actually talking – would have been pretty effective, but now I can’t use them. Poo.
Tomorrow isn’t a particularly long day, but it’s a busy one. I work from 8 to 11:30, have choir from 12 to 1ish, speech class from 1 to 2:30 and my piano lesson at 3pm. Yeah, I’m still going to my piano lesson. Not sure what I’m going to do in the lesson, but I’m going anyway. I guess if nothing else I can improve my technique with my right hand. After the lesson, I come home and start trying to study for a test I have Tuesday night. I say “try” because my attempts to study this weekend haven’t been too successful. The material is too boring to hold my attention once my arm starts hurting.
Speaking of hurting, my arm is starting to act up again. I think it’s time to resort to the narcotics again so I can get some sleep tonight. I wrote a lot tonight, but sure didn’t say much. Maybe something profound will occur to me tomorrow.
Why is it that I feel the most need to write when I have the least ability to type?
I got a decent night’s sleep last night so I think I’m feeling a little better today. Not great, but a little better. I didn’t get up until after 10:30 this morning and have just been putzing around so far today. I finally got around to making a list of things to do today and tomorrow, but don’t feel quite like getting started on anything productive. Hence the blog – always a good way to get settled when feeling unsettled.
That’s how I’ve been feeling – unsettled. This whole college liability thing is unsettling – I’m not sure what to think about it and certainly have no idea what to do. Naturally, my impulse is to just bury my head in the sand and let it all just sort of go away. Not a good idea. So, what should I do instead? Maybe if I write about my confusion, it will help sort it out. If nothing else, it might help to write down these thoughts in case I need to talk to a lawyer.
First of all, how did the whole thing happen? Well, in this class, there is a box known as the “Soapbox.” I’m not sure the exact dimensions, and I’m lousy at estimating, but I would guess that it’s about 2’ to 2.5’ feet square. The height of the box is about mid-way between a step and a chair. I know this for sure based on the level of my anxiety about getting on it – I have this thing about heights. We were told that the box was going to be used for extemporaneous speeches, some planned and some voluntarily. In other words, any time we wanted to “rant” about something for a couple of minutes, we just needed to ask to use the soapbox. Other times, however, he would assign a soapbox speech. Our other planned speeches would be given behind the podium, or anywhere we wanted, really.
On one other occasion, I used the box for one of these assigned but unplanned speeches. When I went up there, I was nervous – not about speaking, but about the box. I made a comment, only half joking, about being able to get a doctor’s note excusing me from the box. The professor just said, “Get on the box.” So I did. No real problem. That time.
But that is a real key issue. When I talked to risk management the first time, they didn’t even mention the box until I said that I didn’t just fall, but that I fell off the box. The second time, she said that the use of the box wasn’t mandatory. (She has never used the word “liability” when talking to me, but that’s what we’re talking about here – the college’s liability). I can’t remember exactly how she put it, but she said that other students had not used the box due to health reasons. Here’s the thing – yes, I could have made an issue of it and refused to use the box. He was not holding a gun to my head, he had not said that not using the box meant an “F” – he just said, “Get on the box.”
This brings up an interesting point about being disabled. There were a lot of ways I could have handled the situation with the box that would probably prevented this whole mess. But I didn’t do any of them. Why? I don’t think that there’s one simple answer to that. There is a part of me that “forgets” that I have physical limitations. It probably goes all the way back to being left out of games in recess or something. I don’t like being singled out. And in order to refuse to use the box, I would have had to single myself out as the only one in class not to use the box. So that wasn’t something that I even considered.
As someone with physical disabilities, I hate not being able to do things that other people are doing. Most of the time that’s unavoidable, but there is a lot of gray area – times when I’m not sure it’s something I can’t do – like the box. And I think most people hate to be singled out, so the answer might have been to eliminate the box altogether. But that’s the catch-22 – I also don’t want to be the one that would deprive the other members of the class of something they might find enjoyable. Maybe they like the box. So why should they not be able to use it just to keep me from feeling left out?
I guess I’m looking for a clear cut answer where one doesn’t exist. I would like to be able to say that the fall is either my responsibility or theirs, when it’s probably somewhere in the middle. In the meantime, though, the medical bills will be rolling in to me regardless to whose fault it was. I probably need to give some thought to the question of whether to accept their offer to increase my hours. Either way, I think that I need to make it clear that, even with an increase in hours, the issue is far from over.
Today was not a good day. Nothing major – no swan dives off podiums, no civil wars broke out – but it was just a day when nothing felt right and everything felt a little off. I think I can attribute some of this feeling to PMS and the weather, neither which usually affect me. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that they may have contributed to my general feeling of being off-kilter. I think the PMS accentuated the feelings I was having, while the weather – a dreary, rainy/humid sort of day – made my arm and knee ache just enough more to make me feel at odds with the world.
I started the day in my web design class – usually one of my favorites. But today I just felt dissatisfied with every web page I had ever done. I’m working on two sites at the moment – a new personal site and a site for my friend, Jane, who’s a professional musician. I was looking at them, trying to figure out what to do next with them because I wasn’t particularly happy with either of them, when the professor came over to have a look. She summed them up nicely – they lack a feeling of maturity. Part of the problem is that I tend to find a visual technique that I like – embossing and contouring for instance – then over use it to the point that the site looks cartoonish.
She’s a funny, little lady – she’s only a little taller standing up than I am sitting down, so I mean little literally. She has a pretty thick Chinese accent and is sometimes a little hard to understand. She generally goes out of her way to make sure that you’re okay with being critiqued. And generally I never have a problem with that. I’m paying money for tuition in order to become a good web designer – to do that I have to be willing to have my work commented on, positively and negatively. But before she could even comment, when she asked, “It okay I say what I think,” I felt ready to cry. I made a joke about it – told her that she could go ahead but I’d probably need tissues. We shared a hearty laugh and then I fought to keep from even tearing up. I don’t want her to feel bad, especially when she was right about the sites.
She made a good suggestion, though. She said to look on the internet for other sites like the ones I’m working on and see what I like and don’t like about them. I didn’t know how to go about looking for personal sites, but I looked at several for mezzo-sopranos and really saw how crap mine looked. Oh, the sites I looked at weren’t perfect, but tons better than mine, and it did give me some ideas for revamping my own sites. So, I’m really glad that she told me what she thought, even though it made me feel heavy inside, a heaviness that hasn’t gone away yet.
Because I was out those two days this week, I decided to skip choir again and go straight to work. Even as I decided it, though, I felt that heavy feeling again. I’ve missed so many choir rehearsals this term that I’m starting to think that I should give the performance a miss this year. But that makes the heavy feeling even heavier – I’ve been in the Medieval Yuletide Feast every year for the past 7 years – I don’t want to miss it. So I guess I just swallow the lump and try to make more of an effort to get to rehearsals from now on. But I really need the money, so today work came first.
Work itself wasn’t too bad – Jane, my boss, was off today and I didn’t have a lot to do. I had a hard time concentrating, though, especially after I talked to Laurie from risk management at the college about the fallout from my fall last week. I had talked to her once before. She’s a painfully nice lady – positively oozes concern. She perfect for the job since you really feel like she cares and is going to do everything she can for you, whether this is true or not. Well, she seemed doubtful that the college was going to be able to help me out with my co-pays but promised to really search high and low, leaving no stone unturned, etc. When I talked to her today, she had found a rather unique possibility – certainly one I never thought of.
While she wasn’t prepared to promise anything at this point, she told me that a possible option would be for the college to fund more hours for my work/study position. With the increase in hours, perhaps the co-pays wouldn’t be such a hardship, is apparently their thinking. Yeah, I know that probably sounds a little ludicrous – working more hours in lieu of a cash settlement. Hell, it is ludicrous. I only make $7.00 an hour and already work 20 hours per week. If I worked my ass off, the most I could increase my hours to would be 27 hours per week and that would be pushing it big time. So, do the math. I would only be making about $50 per week extra so it would take me four weeks of busting my ass to just pay the hospital co-pay. Not the doctor’s bills or radiology or anything – just the hospital co-pay. The position ends in the middle of December with no guarantee that they’ll fund it next semester. Wow, what a deal. I’ll bet they’ll be surprised when I don’t fall all over myself to jump at the chance.
Actually, I haven’t decided yet how to handle it. Part of me wants to just say, screw it, chalk it up to a stupid accident, a learning experience, etc, etc. Most people I talk to, however, feel I should pursue it, that the college is liable. I just don’t know. But I’m not going to solve this tonight and I probably should think about taking my meds and getting to bed. The heavy feeling hasn’t gone away, but maybe I’ll feel better if I can get a good night’s sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept well since the fall – it hurts too much when I move in my sleep. Tomorrow is soon enough to explore the pros and cons of pursuing action against the college, to decide what I’m going to do about my crappy websites and to figure out how to ease the heaviness in my soul.
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Take care of that arm, my friend, and talk to the doc if you need to... 
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