A Tough Disability Question

Here is a question I've gotten asked on occasion and just got asked again:

My husband has a coworker whose wife says she has some sort of back problem like a slipped disc or something but I'm not quite sure what it is. She is trying to quit her job and get on disability. It seems like there are a lot of people who aren't really disabled and try to get on disability just so they don't have to work and then go around acting like they are so totally disabled. Does this piss real disabled people like you and D off?

No. In general, they don't because they are in a real fucked-up situation and are kind of in a no-man's land for getting any help with their problem. This is a complicated answer, so bear with me.

We're talking about your, I guess you could call, more ambiguous or hidden impairments here such as bad backs, carpel tunnel, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, arthritis,fibromyalgia, asthma...what else? You get what I'm talking about, right? Not your traditional impairments like blindness, deafness, wheelchair user, down syndrome, etc. The implication is that they are liars, fakers, over-exaggerators, lazy people who want to get out of work and lay around in a luxurious life of disability benefits.

First of all, I have developed a policy. If someone tells me they have [insert disease, symptom, impairment here] that is affecting their life and ability to work; I just take it as truth on face value. This probably comes from my experiences on people making judgments all the time on how disabled/nondisabled I am. Because I have some vision and hearing, people have called me a faker. The myth is that only totally blind people use guide dogs and no legally blind person can read! When I am seen with a dog, I'm a fake, when I'm seen without a dog or cane, I'm not accepting my blindness or something. People treat me totally different based on how disabled I appear, rather than how my particular impairments really affect me. D has also faced some of this. He is quadriplegic, but he does have some use of his arms and hands. People think quadriplegic, they think Christopher Reeve. He also gets judged on his pain levels. D has chronic deafferent pain, which is sort of a phantom pain that some people with spinal cord injuries get that is not caused by any stimuli, but is caused by the brain misinterpreting incomplete signals from the nerves as pain. Because he doesn't go around screaming in agony, people try to judge his pain all the time. Then there is the whole hierarchy of disability thing where I get constantly asked, "Would you rather be deaf or blind?" Or "Quadriplegic or Blind?" Or, "Who's better off? D or this dude over here with a spinal cord injury?" Or, "You aren't as bad off as that other blind person over there, what are you complaining about?" So, I completely don't make judgments (or try very hard not to) when it comes to people's pain or ability levels or impairments. I just take it as is. I might not know a lot about whatever disease or impairment you've got, but if you tell me it affects your life  in X way, Okay. I'm not totally naive in thinking that there aren't incidences of people who make up shit to get out of working, but if they are smart, they won't go the disabled route because the payoff is not all it is cracked up to be.

Second, a little bit of term defining, here. There is a difference to me between the words "impairment" and "disability." Impairment is the actual thingy you've got going on that in medical terms is affecting your life. For example, Diabetes, retinitis pigmentosa, spinal cord injury, etc. Disability is a social construct that is how your impairment is viewed by society and how society reacts to it and you as a person. Impairment is a natural part of being human. All of our bodies are less than perfect, and sometimes we need to make adaptations or have medical assistance or sometimes there is nothing that can be done and you just live with it. We all have impairments and will have more as we age.  Disability is this imaginary line that society has drawn in the sand somewhere on the bell curve that separates "us" from "them." The disabled from the non. The socially valuable from the socially dead. That line called disability can change at the whim of society or just a bunch of researchers in academia.

A few examples: In, I think the 1970s, mental retardation was defined as scoring at 85 or below on a Stanford Binet IQ test. These people qualified for services and benefits in many areas based on this line in the sand. Then, primarily driven by funding problems, the criteria changed and you had to score below 75 on an IQ test. A whole chunk of people suddenly didn't have mental retardation anymore and lost all of their support services. They didn't get any smarter. Many of them became homeless or ended up in the prison system. I believe the term they suddenly started using for this group was "dull normals."

Take height. Less than 1% of the male population is less than 4'10" inches tall. Many of these people have some form of Dwarfism. These men need to get custom clothing, car equipment, stools and adaptations for their homes, etc. Sometimes their small stature has advantages and they can fit into small spaces and do very specific work that average height people can't do as well. Sometimes they have health and joint problems related to their stature. These people are considered by society to be disabled. Less than 1% of the male population is taller than 6'4". These men need to get custom clothing, beds, sometimes houses with taller doorways, and larger cars, furniture, etc. Sometimes they can do very specific work that average height people can't do as well. Sometimes they have health and joint problems. These people are not considered by society to be disabled. They are often NBA superheroes.

Just like society moves the line somewhat arbitrarily on which impairment is considered a disability, they can also react arbitrarily to different people with the same impairment. Say Jane has diabetes. She's gone for years without a single problem related to it. She hasn't had any side effects such as kidney disease or blindness. She has never had an insulin reaction since her initial diagnoses and treatment, which involved use of an insulin pump. She works full time, eats 3 meals a day and doesn't need to snack much. It hardly affects her life. Then she applies for a promotion where she will be driving clients around in a car. Her employer knows that she is diabetic and determines that it is too much of a liability to have her in the company car with clients because she might go into a diabetic coma or insulin shock, even though she hasn't for 20 years. She doesn't get the promotion because her employer perceives her impairment as a disability. Now, in another office, you have Judy. She is also diabetic. But even though she tries very hard to control her disease she has some side effects. She has some early kidney disease that makes her edemic and it is important that she put her feet up several times a day. She also occasionally does have insulin shock and needs to stop everything and take a few minutes of a break to eat a snack and rest. She asks her employer to give her up to three impromptu 15 minute breaks throughout the day to rest her feet and have snacks and check her blood sugar. The employer says no, diabetes is not a disability, he doesn't have to accommodate her, and she has to quit to save her health.

So back to the original question. I'm trying to demonstrate the no-man's land these people with more ambiguous impairments sometimes get trapped in and why it is hard for them to work even though it may seem from the outside that they "aren't all that disabled." There are basically two main socially constructed disability barriers that they run into.

1. They aren't being covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act

The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act has taken a brutal beating by the Supreme Court over the last 16 years. The law, which in regards to employment is supposed to insure nondiscrimination in the workforce, requires that the employer provide reasonable accommodations to employees with disabilities and/or employees regarded as having disabilities who are otherwise qualified to do the job unless the accommodations present an undue hardship to the employer. The sponsors of the law had prepared for court battles regarding the terms "reasonable accommodations," "otherwise qualified" and "undue hardships." They knew these were ambiguous terms that were going to have to be flushed out and discussed by society as a whole. How much money do you put into an employee compared to what you are going to get out of him? When do accommodation expenses become an "undue hardship" to a corporation? Things like that.

But instead of litigating those issues, the courts have been arguing for 16 years about who is "disabled enough" to have a right to be covered under the law. The answer is supposed to be anybody! It is a civil rights law! If you are having any sort of problem with discrimination in regards to any sort of impairment (no matter the severity) in the workplace and your employer won't accommodate you, then you should be able to file an ADA case. Then the courts decide whether the accommodation you are asking for is reasonable and whether you are otherwise qualified and whether the accommodation you are asking for is an undue hardship. The law is for everyone, which is why the language "perceived as having a disability" was included, in cases like Jane the healthy diabetic who had an impairment that really didn't affect her job at all and she didn't even ask for accommodations, yet her employer perceived her as having a disability.

Look at it like this. Say you are generally thought of as Caucasian. You look to most people like a white person. But say your grandmother is black. Your employer finds out your grandmother is black and he fires you because he is a racist asshole who still believes in the "one drop" rule where any "black blood" makes you black. So you take him to court and file a discrimination suit. Now, instead of determining if the asshole did in fact fire you because of a race issue, the courts instead spend their time determining if you are black enough to be covered by the Civil Rights laws. Since you look white, and you are only 1/4th black, and most people don't think of you as black, your case gets thrown out. The laws don't apply to you.

The courts are treating the ADA like a benefits law, rather than a civil rights law. They look at it as if you have to fit into this special group that they've defined to qualify for special privileges. But the ADA isn't about special privileges, it is about leveling the playing field for workers with impairments, and protecting their rights to do work they are qualified to perform regardless of disability.

So all of these people with these sort of ambiguous or hidden impairments are facing discrimination and have no recourse to fight it. One example I remember reading about is a woman with diabetes who wanted a 15 minute break when taking the USMLE (medical boards). The boards last for hours, and she wanted to take a supervised break in between test sections so she could have a snack. She was denied and filed an ADA claim. She lost not because they decided her request wasn't a reasonable accommodation, but because the ADA didn't apply to her because she wasn't disabled enough.

There is also a lot of cross over with this issue and the labor movement and workman's comp issues. A factory worker gets an overuse injury such as carpel tunnel from doing a repetitive factory task for years. The worker can't keep up with the assembly line, and is in danger of losing her job. She asks to be retrained and transferred to another area of the factory where she would use different body parts, she is denied and fired. She files an ADA lawsuit, but she is determined not disabled enough to qualify for reasonable accommodations.

The courts are doing this because of pressure from anti-union corporations and lobbyists who have a history of denying and minimizing workforce injuries, factory safety, and workman's comp coverage. If the courts deny the factory worker's impairment, they can also deny any responsibility for it. These workman's comp cases set precedents so that even if you are a diabetic in an office doing white collar work, you will not be covered by the ADA.

2. Disability is either ALL or NOTHING.

Sometimes it may seem like people with these hidden and ambiguous impairments are over exaggerating the impact that their impairments have on their lives and their ability to work. They may well be. But that is because, if they can't get reasonable accommodations in the workplace, their other option is to apply for disability benefits. The Social Security Administration's definition of disability is to be "unable to sustain gainful employment." You either have to work full-time and keep up with a totally healthy person, or you have to be able to do absolutely nothing at all. Those are your choices. If people with particular impairments have not been able to keep up with their peers in the workforce, and have not been able to secure accommodations, often they have to go to the other extreme to get an income and health insurance and medical care to survive.  It's all or nothing. In reality, of course, the way people's bodies function are on a dynamic continuum. There is no imaginary line that when you step to one side, you can do every job in the universe competently, and when you step to the other side, you can do no job at all. So, if you're watching your husband's coworkers wife run around and prepare a full meal and then wash the dishes and then swim laps while she is telling you, "My back hurts so bad that I just can't work. I just can't get any sort of job at all. I'm completely disabled;" What she is probably really saying is, "I'm scared shitless that if I try to work in any way and it doesn't work out, I will lose my income, my health insurance, and the drugs and therapy that I am now taking for my back that even allow me to get through the day and occasionally make this meal for you."

My personal philosophy is that almost all people can work. I'm talking 99.99999% of the population. I'm talking the only exceptions might be someone with such an impairment like Terri Schiavo's. D, me, a person with Chronic Fatigue, a person who is blind, paralyzed, AND has cognitive disabilities all at the same time, a diabetic, a quadruple amputee, all of us can work and contribute to society. I've seen it happen. At my last job, my boss put a guy to work at Powell's bookstore scanning new books into the computer. The guy has cognitive disabilities and is quadriplegic. What he can do is push a button. A bunch of engineers rigged up some kind of device that would grab a book and scan it. His job was to push a button and make it happen, watch to see if it scanned correctly. I've seen job developers put all kinds of severely and multiply disabled people to work. Everyone can work.

But not everyone can go into a job opening cold, sit down with an employer at an interview, convince him that you can do the job better than anyone else, and match the job description point by point and follow all company policies both formal and implied with no accommodations. D can't, I can't, a lot of people can't.

The unemployment rate among the disabled is over 70%. There is a whole chunk of valuable workforce out there that is being wasted and living off benefits because corporations aren't willing to make accommodations and society can't appreciate the value of partial participation. They'd rather disabled people just go away.

The sad thing for the hidden and ambiguously disabled folks are that they are often the easiest and cheapest to accommodate. A diabetic wants a couple of breaks? Big deal. A person with Chronic Fatigue might need only flexible hours or a job share situation. A person with carpel tunnel might just need a $500 program to type with his voice instead of his hands. A person with chemical sensitivity or allergies might just need her own office and an air filter instead of a cube. But short sighted workers don't want people with impairments to get these 'benefits' and 'special privileges.' They'd rather pay thousands of dollars every year in FICA so that these people can't work at all.

And they also pay a lot of money to SSA and insurance companies to make sure these folks aren't big fakers, liars, and cheats. They make these people prove over and over again that they can't work for shit. Often times even going to the lengths of hiring private investigators and videotaping them without their knowledge. Waste of money. If you really want to catch the cheaters, this is what you do. Bend over backwards to accommodate them. Make every effort to work with and around their impairment. Give them no excuses. Make it as easy as possible for them to work. It will save money and make a whole lot of people happier.

The reason that the so-called 'truly disabled' get mad at the sort of ambiguously or mildly impaired folks is because we seem to be working at cross purposes. The more traditionally disabled have to prove all the time that they can work. It is easy for me or D to get on disability. Our impairments are in the magic "blue book" of impairments that SSA uses to just speed you right through the process and qualify you. People just look at us and decide we can't do any gainful employment. We have nothing to lose by trying to work, because it is somewhat easy (I said somewhat!) to jump off and on the disability benefits roller coaster of fun. Our mission is to get people to believe we can do stuff and let us be taxpaying citizens.

Those with hidden impairments are traditionally un-indoctrinated into disability culture. They aren't totally accepted here and thus they don't learn our mysterious ways and goals. They have failed in the nondisabled world because they haven't been accommodated and accepted there either. And they see the only solution as trying to make everyone believe that they are one of the 'truly disabled.' They think to do that they have to go around and prove how absolutely useless they are as a worker. They are sometimes desperate for income and health care and they see the quickest way to get there is to cry complete and total disability even though this defies logic to onlookers who see them as basically healthy people. So we get mad at them for saying that they are disabled people who can't do anything when we are trying to prove that disabled people can do most anything with accommodations.

Here is the solution. We as disabled people (and the rest of society) need to embrace these people, help them get their immediate needs met, then get them learned and turned around in the right direction to be our allies and help us fight for better and more equitable working conditions.

They need to know that the answers don't lie in proving that they are disabled and disabled people can't work. The answers lie in getting governments and corporations to provide all people with affordable health care and reasonable accommodations and equitable treatment in the workplace. We need to get ourselves, these guys, and the labor unions together to work towards worker friendly, safe, and fair work environments.

Because, folks, sitting around in the disability benefits impoverishment circus of lunacy where your basic job is to prove your worthlessness and be paranoid about anything you actually attempt to do while you wrestle with endless nonsensical bureaucracy is not the sunny tropical beach life you all think it is. We'd all much rather be valued and contributing by working and pulling a decent paycheck.

*I have to give credit here to Mary Johnson from the Ragged Edge for done learnin' me right on this issue.

Comments

[luolin]

Thank you.
Also, I hope the long post means you're feeling a little better.

[alexandra]

Hi Lisa. No more email - just comments. I worked for a workers comp insurance company in CA and my experience was that for every 1 valid claim there were 999 bogus claims. 999 claims of "on the day I was fired for incompetence, I developed headaches, back aches and stress" against the 1 claim of hand cut off in meat packing plant. And I think it is a big problem because it costs a lot of money to administer bogus claims and it takes resources away from people who really need it. All you say about disabled people not having accomodations made for them is true but it is also true that plenty of people are cheats. So, put me in the skeptics column.

[Tim]

re: " It seems like there are a lot of people who aren't really disabled and try to get on disability just so they don't have to work and then go around acting like they are so totally disabled."

The vast majority of individuals who file for disability have legitimate problems. Think about it. Even if you get approved for social security disabiltiy and not ssi, the benefit amount is very small. Almost anybody would rather be working and earning an income versus being on disability.

[cherylc]

Once again, I think you are right on.

I don't feel I'm disabled from RA, but I wish there were a middle ground between fulltime work and health insurance and Disability, which I don't want and wouldn't qualify for. Parttime work with health insurance would be great. I've had such a job before, but couldn't find one this time around.

[RJ]

I must be of the .00001% of the REALLY disabled people you don’t know. I really took offense with your blog it seemed so one sided. You could be a very nice person who’s frustrated because of all the fakes out there, heck nobody likes to be fooled or taken advantage of. However, I really don’t think it’s fair for you to be so harsh on people who are truly disabled. I've seen the abusers out there who make it so unbelievably hard for legitimate people with disabilities, but in reading your blog I have to say it’s unfair.

I broke my back, “in the line of duty”, working in law enforcement. Not knowing I fractured my vertebrae, I thought “okay a couple of paid days off of work would be nice” I thought I just pulled a few muscles. It turned into years and after 2 failed back surgeries I’ve come to the conclusion everyone is worried about the money and to hell with the person. I was very good at my job but now I’m a poster child for the scooter chair. Do you even realize the depression that comes from losing your life as you’ve known it for 38 years? All of your goals ripped out from under you, your family unit and structure destroyed? From reading your blog I would say your disability was something you were born into or developed over time. Still it doesn’t grant you and all of the insurance claim representatives out there the gift of knowing all. You may not realize this but you have armed the insurance companies with a text book account of what they think is normal thinking is. You can’t think you are in the same category as a real disabled person. Someone who’s life expectancy has dropped because if the injury, pain and drugs.

[Lisa]

Interesting comments. I wonder if some of you actually read the whole post?

RJ, I do not discount any of the hardships your disability has caused you. It must be a terrible thing to have your life and career stripped from you at 38. D lost everything in one instant at 18, right when he was to have gone off to college and had his whole life ahead of him. I recently lost my vision just 2 weeks before my twins were born, even though I was visually impaired before, it was indeed traumatic.
Now, forget what the authorities are bullshitting you around with and making you prove, when you look at yourself, what are the good things that you offer the world, your family, your country? What gifts do you have? In not knowing you, I can already see you can use the computer and write decently. Could you do that for ten minutes a day? An hour? Maybe two? Or is there something else you would like to do to contribute to society?
What if you could do that thing and still get your health insurance and a living wage? Even if it was just for two hours a day and with a special computer or a special chair that helped your back or whatever it is that you need? What if you could do that and get the respect of your peers, even if the work you were doing was not as much as your peers or took you longer or you did it differently? What if your needs were met, both healthwise and in the workplace, and financially...and you were able to add your gifts to society at large?

This is what I mean when I say everyone can work. This is the world I'm talking about...not the current one. Not the one the insurance companies fancy that you can just jump right into the regular current workforce with no assistance or help so they don't have to pay for you.

It is a world where partial participation counts for something, instead of it just being you can sit on your ass and do nothing, or you can work full-time without accommodations.

The ten minutes you might have spent writing this comment would count. You can work in this world. Nearly everyone can.

[shannon]

Huh.

I was gonna say "yee-ha! Where do I sign up for Lisa's revolution?" But now I'm all confused by RJ.

RJ, I don't think you got what she meant. Anyhow, she isn't harsh or one-sided in my experience. She's not saying that everyone MUST or SHOULD work, but that most people can and if they want to, they should be allowed to.

[RJ]

I have to admit, I could not focus on your entire blog. That's one of the problems I have with this medication, I can't remember anything short term. I skimmed after the first few paragraphs and that was unfair to you. I see that you think people should be allowed to work if they want and that everyone has a place in this world so that they can contribute. My bust. I'm in pain 24/7 and I'm getting bashed by my insurance company and at work I have been told I'm just a number. This was just yesterday when my Union president and I spoke on the phone; he said people in my position need to go on the TV. news and fight. How in the world could I... As I was speaking to him my neighbors had my truck towed because 5" of it crossed the property line. Life has put me down and I'm driving from the back seat.

Regardless, I, we have to survive and maybe I shouldn't of got so much on the offense but I had to explain as much as apologize. If anyone has the desire and ability to work no matter what the disability they definitely should be allowed. If you worked in law enforcement and those injuries occurred they would make you go back to work! And then find some made up reason to fire you, It's all about the "Mighty Dollar". You are a disposable item in this politically charged society.

*Just a note to the confused reader afterI posted my thought before; Try not to let yourself get confused. Say it if you feel it, screw the road bumps!

[Tim]

re:"First of all, I have developed a policy. If someone tells me they have [insert disease, symptom, impairment here] that is affecting their life and ability to work; I just take it as truth on face value."

Fantastic policy, because, in most cases, we can't see a person's disability.

re:"And they also pay a lot of money to SSA and insurance companies to make sure these folks aren't big fakers, liars, and cheats. They make these people prove over and over again that they can't work for shit. Often times even going to the lengths of hiring private investigators and videotaping them without their knowledge.

SSA doesn't do this, however, when you're filing an application for benefits or filing an appeal, the disability examiner (I used to be one) will sometimes conduct an "activities of daily living" call to the claimant's relative, friend, or neighbor. Also, after an individual has been approved for disability, they still have to "prove" over and over again that they're disabled by having their claim reviewed every 1, 3, or 7 years.

Lisa, this post of yours was excellent.

[Jennifer Greene]

The problem is that our society has taken the position that anyone who is ABLE to work should be FORCED to work. I'd hate to see a world that has quadriplegics lined up in front of scanners pushing a single button all day long. Just how fast would that give them repetitive stress injury to their only working part, I wonder?

A better solution is to give everyone, whether abled or dis, a Guaranteed Livable Income (I like to think of it as Guaranteed Working Capital) representing their rightful share of the nation's wealth as its human resources.

The GLI could be paid out monthly from the same mailing list now used for income taxes; people who do well that year would have it taxed back. It will save money in the long run. There will be less stress on the health-care system, and most of the welfare bureaucracy could be dismantled. Money given to low-income people tends to be recirculated many times within the local community rather than invested in off-shore tax shelters.

People who don't want jobs at a given time can make room for those who do. Nobody would have to demean themselves by pretending they can't work at all, nor would they be forced to neglect their health or their loved ones and/or harm themselves by struggling at jobs that are unsuitable for them.

We have had such a run of really bad jobs that many people are now convinced that nobody would work at all unless forced to. But the employer/employee economic structure is actually a fairly recent one. Most of the people who sit in Congress and pass the laws, or sit in "think tanks" and parrot back what their paymasters want to hear, already have guaranteed incomes. Why shouldn't we?

See: http://www.usbig.net

[lou]

Wow! I just linked to your site via a comment on Ragged Edge online and loved this post. I struggle to find the words to express these very ideas to classmates and colleagues and you did an amazing job of crystallizing these concepts. My dad (C-7 quad) worked for many years with little to no accomodation in customer service for a major airline, but went on disability after the airline went out of business. He could have worked, he wanted to work, but chose to stay home and raise his three kids through adolescence rather than go back out in a hostile world and try to find work. My little sister, who has developmental disabilities and a few physical impairments, applied for SSI because though she could work part time, it wasn't enough to get health benefits or live independently. She was denied. She loves working, she just needs a little help to get by. It's such a horrible system.

Anyway, I just wanted to say "right on!"

[RJ]

Funny, the blog had an X-judge’s position. I have a neighbor who loves to take pictures of me at any point she can! My doctor says “do as much as you can” and I try, but then I'm surrounded by harassment. It's like they think I'm enjoying this life. I was so full of life before this injury! I was a regular “Johnny helper”.

I say that because I feel I have to paint a picture of myself to you, a stranger who even dares to claim he/she is a judge with the manors you exhibit. So the original Blog was meant for disabled people who are not in “pain” & are not “fakers” & are real, true and trying to make it in this world. Myself as an injured Officer, I feel betrayed.

Just because there is a sentence in the original Blog that is negative or maybe not so negative as much as one sided you have taken the stereotypical view as you deem fit. It doesn’t look to fair to me that your looking at someone trying to live with pain and gave up freedom as their job to defend such a mind as your. Please tell me you’re not really a judge ~ at the very least not practicing ( I think you eluded to the point that you did this as an occupation while in the course of a different job than what you occupy now. My health was not asked for but given with total confidence that society, the same society that handed me this badge would not take the word of a civilian. If that was the case then why wouldn’t you just hand the guns out to the general public? Yes, I took offense and maybe there are a bunch of transparent “fakers” out there but never the less I’m heart broken at the same time. I had such hope! Right now I hope the topic of “faker’s doesn’t mean someone like me and pray to God no one would want, what I feel, every day, evening, or night.

There are different kinds of disabilities and every case has to be individually measured. I hurt all the time and I wish I could work! I wish my memory wasn't so clouded by this medication and I could enjoy yard work like I used to. Something as little as getting outside means so much to me; I even bought a camper so I could lay around at different quiet spots in pain as long as it is “not in my house”. I can't believe you wouldn't believe the ill person, with medical evidence and would rather trust a neighbor?!?! If you only knew my neighbors! And they’re messy and mean too, they really do harass me in ways that are petty I must admit (like throwing half cooked eggs into my yard) as I continue down this road to an inevitable recovery, at some point I know I'll have to face the pain and fight back or just die.... But right now and when you’re sleeping I'm awake because people just don't care. Money talks… Society, at this point, makes me feel they would rather pounce on a person who can't be at their best because of a painful disability it like the rule makers and judges can’t feel their pain or measure it some how, I don’t get that. Like I said before I pray there are not people out there who hurt like me, but I know also that it can’t be true. You can worry about money all you want but I was there protecting you from the psycho's of this world and being around criminal types constantly I can't accept that a decision. It’s like allowing an Officer, someone who put his life on hold 8-16 hours a day 24/7, would not be considered honest in telling the truth. The only things getting me by so I can have a few minutes at a tolerable level are my three (3) narcotics I take and knowing I have such a loving family helps me want to thrive. Regardless what society thinks at this point I am here on this earth as a veteran, X - Medical-Surgical Technologist and a now X-Officer. I used to be enthusiast and now I’m undetermined.

[Lisa]

RJ,

Since we hashed this out via comments and email several weeks ago, I thought we had a respectful understanding of where we were both coming from.

I'm afraid I'm now not understanding any of your latest comment. Did you accidentally post to the wrong blog? I'm sorry if I'm missing something here, but I'm not understanding your references. Good luck to you.