From here http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051024/zirin

Seven years ago I was engaged to a man named Glen.  We were planning to honeymoon on the Baja in January. Glen and his two children then aged 14 and 16 were living with me. I was never able to have children of my own and I took those kids into my heart as well as my home.

Jarah, Glen's 14 year old daughter had been very much the wild child before she came to stay with us. Her mother was extremely controling, physically abusive, a fundamentalist Christian who left out the "Christ" part, if you know what I mean. Jarah had responded to this treatment with a great deal of rebellion and acting out, cumulating in an adventure where she and a friend stole a car and vanished for a week. When Jarah finally was arrested by the police and returned home unharmed (thank God!), we had a conference about what to do with her. Glen suggested that Jarah come stay with us and I could home school her for a semester. Glen said, "Quit your job, I'll take care of you!" Well, I loved Glen and I loved Jarah, and I wanted to put some energy into sending out professional resumes since at the time I was working in a job that was not in my chosen field. Plus, it seemed like a good idea to get Jarah away from the bad crowd she'd begun to run with on the other side of town, so I agreed.

When Jarah came to stay with us, she was a great kid. She was bright as a button and sailed through her home schooling workbooks with ease. She helped around the house without my even asking her, and, although she still spoke on the phone with her fellow desperado friend, she also began to make new friends in the local church youth group. I was very pleased with her progress. I adored that kid and she seemed to like me, too.

Glen was a building contractor/carpenter. It was amazing the stuff he could create with his two hands, a few pieces of wood and a hammer and saw. His skills were in great demand and he brought home a nice paycheck every Friday. We had developed a Friday ritual where Glen would come home, pick me up and go down to the local grocery to do the food shopping for the next week. Glen was a stereotypical guy. No comparison shopping for him! He'd prowl the aisles with the grocery cart, sweeping things off the shelves. If his son liked Gold Plated Cereal Flakes at $10.00 a box for breakfast, 4 boxes of Gold Plated Flakes were tossed into our cart. After we made a nice profit for the local Safeway, Glen would always take me out to dinner at a good restaurant. It had to be somewhere that served a proper steak because Glen had been working out in the weather all week, and he wanted MEAT! When he peeled off the bills to pay the waiter, he'd also give me the money for the next week's household expenses. There was always more than I needed, so the next day, I go over next door and give the extra to my Mother who I knew needed the cash.

Weekends, Glen would get out his on/off road motorcycle, a monster that he had nicknamed "Chopper" and Jarah and I would take turns being the one who sat behind him on the bike, exploring various dirt bike trails up in the foothills and mountains. If the kids wanted to see a movie, Glen would pay for us all to go to a Sunday matinee. When Jarah wanted new clothes, he'd hand her a $100 bill for a pair of jeans (she loved the "in" brand at the time - Genkos, I think they were called - and VERY pricey).and drop the two of us off at the mall while he went over to the Harley dealership nearby to drool over a replacement for Chopper someday. Once he surprised the kids and me by coming home with a large terrarium and a very classy looking African day Gecko. Glen  had been a lay minister back in California, and if there was ever a worry or concern that came up, he'd get me to hold his hands and pray together that God show us the right path. We said grace before every meal. In addition to his other accomplishments Glen was also a gifted writer AND artist with a great sense of the absurd. He was very witty and looked much like a younger Robert Redford.

What a catch! Happy, happy, happy Middle American family! So it seemed. For a while.

When I met Glen he claimed to have 5 years sobriety and faithfully went to AA meetings almost every day. He had a sponsor and seemed to be working his program. and most people in his AA group praised him as a good fellow member. At the very eNd though, Glen started acting very strange. I felt uneasy about some of his behaviors, but I brushed those feelings aside. I shouldn't have. Glen had started USING, again. On Friday October 30, 1998, my old furnace went out in the morning after Glen had left for work. The first cold front of the season also started to come through that day, and Jarah and I bundled up in sweaters, waiting for Glen to come home and take a look at what ailed the 50 year old dragon which was refusing to belch its normal winter fire. Glen was late getting back that night, and when he finally did arrive it was only to say to me, "I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore." Then he turned on his heel, walked out the door, got in his truck, and drove away. Just like that.

Glen had decided that drugs and alcohol were much more worthy of his devotion than his two kids, his fiancee', his job, his life. I was in shock. Jarah's face was white. On Halloween I had to drive Jarah back to her mother because I had no legal say in Jarah's custody and Glen had phoned her to tell her he was driving back to California with their son. His exwife was NOT pleased about her son been driven across the country by a man on God only knew what lethal combination of drugs and alcohol and she filed kidnapping charges against Glen immediently, and called me, as well, to demand Jarah's return. The Colorado State Patrol pulled Glen over just as he was about to cross the Utah statr line with his son and narrowly adverted the case becoming a Federal Kidnapping Charge.. As it was, Glen sweet talked the officer, let Jed get in the patrol car to be returned home, and vanished over the state line into the night. Jarah and I cried all the way to her Mom's house, and then I drove back home and cried some more in my cold, empty house.

A friend came by to check on me and found me in a crumpled up little heap on the floor in my freezing cold home. I had no money, no job, my family had vanished over night. I was close to being in hysterics. My friend called a couple of other mutual friends - guys who knew nothing about furnaces. They came over and coaxed my old furnace into putting out heat again, but unknown to any of us, it also began to pour out deadly carbon monoxide gas. The date on my disability paperwork is given as October 31, 1998.

In the weeks after this happened, I walked around like a zombie stricken by both grief and a deadly poison that I had no idea had crept into my air. The worst times were when I woke up and the realization of what had happened would hit me all over again. The pain was unbearable and I felt it like a punch to my gut every time. Once I'd absorbed that initial blow, I could function - sort of. I dreaded going to sleep because going to sleep meant waking up and being hit with that shock of pain all over again. I stayed awake for days on end to avoid waking up. I formed the habit of going to the local Walmart down the street because it was the only place that was open 24/7 and I couldn't stand wandering around my empty house alone. The aisles of Walmart became my refuge and I would prowl up and down them, staring with unseeing eyes at piles of brightly colored bath towels or women's shoes or the displays of car batteries and tires in the automotive section.

Somehow it had penetrated my consciousness that astronomers were predicting a banner year for the November Leonid shower. The Leonids were supposed to reach a 30 year maximum in on the 17th of November. One night I was wandering around the Walmart in utter despair, trying to decide between two options - going down and admitting myself to the psych ward of the local hospital or traveling down to northern Arizona to see the meteors away from the city lights and to "talk" with the Navajo's chief deity, Changing Woman. Changing Woman is responsible for turning winter to spring; she can make youth out of old age; she created all the plants and animals; and she created the Dine' or Navajo from her own skin. She has two twin sons called the Monster Slayers. The twins killed all the monsters that once inhabited the earth and made it so human beings could live there. If ever someone needed their winter changed to spring it was I, and it wasn't even officially winter yet!

to be continued...

Its been another sleepless night.  My mind races frantically here and there seeking solutions, but I seem to have run out of options.  I am disabled and cannot work at most conventional kobs.  My sole income is $671.00/month.  The state of Colorado cancelled my food stamps and I've been trying to get them back unsuccessfully for 4 months now.  I am 54 years old and have no close family.  My disability involves neurological damage that makes it difficult for me to remember new faces; my short term memory is vry poor.  These things have made me very skeptical of other people, and I have no one who is close to me to assist me.

 

My rent is paid up through March 1st and then?  Its still pretty cold to have to go live on the National Forest in March.  The way both the United States in general and the state of Colorado in particular treats its low income disabled citizens is nothing short of criminal.  I worked and paid into the system for 30 years and when I became ill and could no longer work, this has been my reward.

 

I am not the only disabled person in such a desperate place, last summer, I wrote the following essay about a friend of mine named Clarity Rose:

 

CLARITY ROSE

 

Yesterday morning I got up at 5:00am to drive my friend, Clarity Rose, down to the local Independence Center for the disabled.  It was a cold, wet morning with clouds and fog blotting out the mountains to the west.  Clarity Rose was waiting anxiously for me by her front gate when I arrived.  Her long red hair was the one bit of color in her grey neighborhood in a grey, chilly dawn.

 

"Play that song," she exclaimed as she climbed in the passenger seat of my car.  I knew that she meant the song, "I can see clearly now.”  I found the CD and slid it into my car stereo.

 

"I can see clearly now, the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day!"

 

Clarity Rose and I sang along in unison, and she made me repeat the track three times in a row on our drive downtown.  We pulled up to the entrance of the plain building which houses the Independence Center and saw that at 6:00am, there were already three people huddled out in the morning cold and damp, waiting for the doors to be opened at 8:00 am.  One was a young man with Down's syndrome, another was a Gulf War Vet in a wheelchair who flashed us a peace sign, and the third was a man who had suffered three heart attacks, followed by cancer of the larynx.  He couldn't talk, but he was able to write quickly on a yellow paper tablet he carried.  He wrote the number "4" on the tablet, tore it off and handed it to Clarity Rose with a smile.

 

I had driven Clarity Rose down to the Independence Center that morning because she had received a letter in the mail informing her that a wait list for 25 precious housing vouchers would be made available on a first come, first served basis, starting at 8:00 am that morning.  We live in a city of over 500,000, and the wait list for a housing voucher at the city housing authority is currently more than 2 years long.  Things are only to get worse.  Under the current administration's budget, Colorado alone will loose 2,000 housing vouchers in the next 3 years. 

 

Its always darkest right before it goes pitch black.

 

Clarity Rose suffered a brain aneurism several years back.  She was in a coma for three days and almost died.  After her surgery, she was in rehab for 6 months, learning how to walk and talk again.  She's friendly and cheerful and can't add a column of simple numbers or fill out a simple form without assistance.  She was a housewife most of her life - married twice, divorced twice.  After her aneurism, she met a man who was also handicapped and they lived together for some years until he died of a heart attack last October.  They never married because Clarity Rose's SSI would have been taken from her, and her friend didn't get enough from SSDI to support two people.  As it was, Clarity Rose's SSI was stopped for 4 months when she got a small insurance payment of $4,000.00 after her friend's death.

 

Her SSI will be $579.00/month when it resumes - the maximum disabled people on SSI can get in the state of Colorado.  I am worried sick about her.  How is she going to pay rent, utilities, and the most basic living expenses on that tiny sum?  She needs a housing voucher, but housing vouchers have become as scarce as ivory billed woodpeckers or black footed ferrets or any other endangered species.  People have heard of them.  They are supposed to exist.  But no one has seen one.

 

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 3.5 million Americans experienced homelessness in 2004.  36% of them were either children or a member of a family with a child or children under age 12.  Here in Colorado 18,938 people were homeless last year for 6 months or longer.  12,054 of them were members of families with children.  The monthly income of a single adult on SSI falls $10.00 short of the fair market value of the average rent nationwide.  Their income is about 19% of the income average for single Americans as a whole.  And these folks are the disabled - those in our society least able to care for themselves, least able to dodge the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

 

A young man who was blind in additional to having a developmental disability of some sort was dropped off from a van and tapped his way with a cane over to join us.  The mute man handed him the number "5".  "That's 5," I said to the blind boy.  "You are number 5 in line.”  He turned his sightless eyes toward me and thanked me, then tapped his way over to the yellow wall of the building and leaned against it, his collar turned up against the unseasonable chill.  A man who appeared to be schizophrenic got number 6, a woman using canes got 7.  A slender black girl who said nothing to any of us got 8.  By 7:00am, the mute man handed out number 25.  Those who arrived after that turned away with their shoulders slumped and walked away silently.

 

When we were finally allowed into the building at 8:00am, 3 clerical workers handed out application forms and we were herded into a meeting room to fill out paperwork (I helped Clarity Rose with hers).  A tired looking administrator told our assembled group not to expect anything.  We'd only been admitted to a wait list.  "Go on about your lives," she said.  "It could be years."

 

When Clarity Rose and I walked out back to my car, I tried not to let her see how defeated and worried I felt for her sake.  "I'll get one!" she said cheerfully.  "I think God wants me to have one."

 

God might, but the American people don't.  I've been angry for the past two days.

 

                                                **********

 

In Buddhist belief there is this thing called the Bodhisattva Vow.  One vows to never attain perfect enlightenment and, thus, achieve nirvana, until every other living being has also been enlightened.  A person who has taken the Bodhisattva vow swears to return to this earth and its suffering lifetime after lifetime in order to help every other sentient being become free of suffering at last.

 

I am terribly disappointed that I was unable to attain a voucher.  But then I think of Clarity Rose.  I think of the other disabled people who waited with me in the early morning rain that day.  One of those people will get that precious voucher, instead.  I hope its Clarity Rose.  I hope its everyone.  I know that whoever gets that voucher will need it desperately.  What right do I have over them?  None at all.

 

Namaste,

Monica

 

 

A week ago last Tuesday, I saw that I was going to run out of my "brain" meds in two days or so. I do NOT function without my brain meds. Heck, I don't function with them, but at least I don't walk into walls the way I do without them.

I had missed my doctor's appt the Friday before because I was busy in court fighting those tickets I got a while back for not coming to a complete stop at a Stop Sign on a one way road. The process took longer than I expected and I was still sitting in traffic court long after I should have been over at the clinic.

Now my doctor was supposed to put me on a new brain med because they no longer manufacture the old one. So, I called up the clinic LAST TUESDAY A WEEK AGO and explained that I needed a new appointment and a re-fill of my prescription. Everything is done at this clinic by voice mail - you can't get a human being even if you are in the midst of a full blown psychotic attack. The clinic calls me back the next day and tells me I have a new appointment that was scheduled for Feb 3rd, and to call the pharmacy so they could fax them my refill request. So, I did as instructed.

Friday at 5:00pm, I call the pharmacy before driving out to pick up my refill. They tell me that they faxed the doctor and the doctor's office said I wasn't on file as a patient! HUH?

Turns out there are two doctors in my town with the same last name, and the idiots at the pharmacy just called the first one on their directory which was the OTHER doctor. After waiting on hold forever to actually speak to a pharmacist and not the ditz who sells candy bars up front, they finally figured out the error and promised to fax in the refill first thing Monday. So, I went the entire weekend walking into walls.

I check with the pharmacy on Monday and after another long wait on hold, "Your call is very important to us..." (yeah, sure!) they tell me that they still haven't heard back from the clinic. So I call the clinic and by dint of guerilla tactics, actually get the person in charge of faxing back refill requests. I wait on the other end of the line as he sorts thru all the faxes and then he cheerily comes back on and tells me that my fax is there and they'll sent it in tout sweet (or however you spell that).

So I give it a good 4 hours and call the pharmacy again. Nothing. I call the clinic, and this time even my guerilla techniques can't get me a real person. So I hop in the car with Star, drive down to the clinic and procede to have a temper tantrum at the receptionist's desk. Presently, a male nurse (the SAME one I spoke with earlier) tells me that I don't show up in the system as having a doc appointment, so they couldn't fax in the re-fill request. He could have told me this FOUR HOURS BEFORE when he had me on the phone! I ask thru clenched teeth if they could please give me another appointment. They give me one for March 3rd and send off the refill request as I watch.

I drive down to the pharmacy and they give me enough of my prescription for 3 days only. "That drug is no longer being manufactured", they inform me primly. I KNOW already!

The pharmacist says they'll try to find another pharmacy that has extra's of my meds, but doesn't seem overly optimistic. The next day, I again drive down to the clinic in a rage. Once again, they take me back to see the same male nurse. I had quite a wait to see him though, and got treated to a story from a man who was homeless and informed me that the clinic won't let you fall asllep there no long how long your wait is or even if you're sick. He said he was staying at the Red Cross Shelter which kicks people out sick or healthy at 7:00am every morning and won't let them back in until 9:00pm. The guy LOOKED sick, he was wheezing and coughing like he was in the final stages of lung cancer or something. "What do you do?" I asked him. "I endure it," he replied.

So, I go back to the consultation office in an even worse mood then when I came in if that's possible, and explained to my nurse pal that they don't make my meds anymore. "Oh yeah," he said brightly. "Now that you mention it, I do recall reading that somewhere." GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

I had brought in my evaluation from my previous doctor which strongly reccomended that I be put on this other medication and gave the exact name and dosage and everything. I suggested, "Look, why don't you guys just put me on this since that what was reccomended for me anyhow?" The male nurse was fascinated by this 8 page medical evaluation which somehow (big surprise!) had never found its way in my file at the clinic. "Do you think I should make a copy of this for your records here?" he asked. Well, duh! I told him it probably wouldn't hurt anything if he did and to be my guest.

So he makes a copy of this report, says he'll show it to the clinic doctor and see if he won't authorize a prescription for this med that I should have been switched to over a year ago.

Today, I get a call from the clinic and they tell me that the doctor doesn't want to put me on brain meds without seeing me first. By this time I am so filed with rage at the incompetancy of this outfit that I am tempted to round up every street person I can find and bring them all out to the clinic with me to have a sleep in on their beat up couches in the waiting room. Instead I say VERY politely, "I have Seen Doctor S. THREE times now and he HAS me on a brain med already except its no longer being manufactured!"

"Really? Too bad, you still have to wait till March 3rd." CLICK! And they hang up the phone.

Which starts ringing as soon as I put down the receiver and its the pharmacy! "We found the last place on the face of the earth that still has a supply of your medicine if you still need it," they say.

THANK YOU!