I have been screaming at the top of my lungs for almost 2 years now... nothing... kaput... I couldn't in all honesty tell you how many letters, emails, submissions to newspapers I have typed.
The thing is it isn't just about me, it's so much bigger than that, which is what makes it more disheartening. I have read and relayed so many stories like and far worse than my own. It seems like people with disabilities have no voices at all. I hear all the time, "Well, you look fine." I'd just like to say, traumatic spine, head, and nerve injuries generally can only be seen with things like MRI's. There are millions of people in our country like me, that look just fine, and like me, wake up wishing they were fine. BUT WE AREN'T!!!
I cannot seem to grasp the fact that unless you have a "visible" disability you don't have one. I wish all of these people that have ignored me, denied me, fired me... could wake up in my body for just one morning. I do believe they would change their opinions. Every morning my body wakes me up... my eyes open when the pain explodes through my neck, up into my brain and eye, down my shoulder and into my hand. Then, I roll out of bed and vomit. I crawl, and when I say crawl... I mean crawl to my medicine and then curl up and hold my breath. Ugly? Yes... does anyone see it, no, only my family. When you see me out in the day, it's after all of that has happened, it's after my medicine starts to work, and it's when I am able to put the fake smile on and grit my teeth to get through the day. I hurt all the time, even when I am smiling.
So... to anyone out there who knows someone like me, don't take it for granted that just because they look fine and are out walking around, that they are fine. Rest assured, they aren't. We just don't feel it necessary to walk around moaning, we have to survive somehow.
It is my wish, my fervent prayer, that one day our country will care enough to look deeper than the surface and fix this "fine" looking system... it's as disabled as I am! People should not be dying, families should not be displaced, and people like myself shouldn't have to go without critical care, because Big Business, Health Insurance Companies, and other special interest groups take precedence over the people. They are not the foundation of the Nation... WE ARE!
1 comment:
The solution is to start a non-profit org, get rich, or better yet, both. You can't really do anything big and create a lasting change without money. You may despise it the idea, but I encourage you to get over it. Sedgwick and others like them use money the wrong way, and it's up to the good people to use money the right way. A non-profit org that people in positions like yours could apply to get help through is what is needed. This non-profit org could supply legal aid and so on. So that attorney said that there's no money in this kind of law? Why don't you do something to make that an untrue statement?
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