Quick Updates

1. Ear appointment tomorrow, which is good because I can't hear again, the drops aren't really helping, and I think my ears are now so aggravated that I've got some other form of ear infection, I don't even know. I can't hear, I get headaches from the constant ringing in my right ear, and it all huuuuurts.

2. Went to another talk about tuition. I didn't storm out in a huff this time but I still got chased down by a reporter. I really think people just like to quote someone who gestures wildly while pointing out things like "we're requiring students with disabilities to take out loans to pay for medications that they will die without."

3. We ran into basking_lizard today and she (and I, but I distrust myself because of the ears) think that Don's voice has vastly improved over the past few days. Is it possible? I hope it's possible.

4. Don had some sort of ridiculous medical test today for whatever's been making him not eat, and another one at the end of the week. I'm beginning to think they just enjoy making him drink gross things and then irradiating him.

5. Never let Katie make you a pie. Ever.

I hate my damned ears and everything they stand for

Went to doctor. Five minutes later, left doctor. Doctor looked in my ears and said "Okay, I need you to put oil in your ears every night for four nights until the wax gets soft so I can suck it out. See you next week."

ARG. Want ears now! *stomp*

Unrelated: A few people have asked for my list of disability-centric blogs that I check the feeds for. Here is a direct link to my Disability Bundle on GReader. I don't think it's actually all of them, but I keep fiddling with it.

Been brooding a lot more today over that whole tax payers vs students thing, and the more I think about it the angrier I get. As someone at last night's town hall meeting pointed out, it ignores that parents of students in university are not only tax payers, they are often helping students pay for their education. In fact, in NS, your access to loans assumes that your parents are supporting you in some way, regardless of whether it's true. So, parents are not only paying into the tax system that supports foolish things like university, they're also expected to pay their children's tuitions directly, and their children are expected to go into crippling debt on top of it. But Nova Scotia is a knowledge-based economy.

I come from the assumption that the only barrier to education should be desire and aptitude. I'm surprised this is a controversial opinion. But then, I remember where my grades were when I was trying to work full-time and write my honour's thesis, and how much they drastically increased when I stopped working. I also know that that "choice" is having long-term affects on me, since my GPA is what determines if I get a SSHRC or any other form of grant or funding for graduate school. Without funding, I can't go on to more education, period. That's not idle speculation, that's fact. And I may have screwed myself over by refusing to approach family for help sooner than I did. And screwed myself over long term, not just for a few years.

When I talk about these things, when I talk about everything to do with my lived experience, people like to act like somehow we are magical unique pegasi, Don & I. No one else in the world experiences what we do, we're just making a big deal and wanting special treatment. But the town hall last night had multiple people with disabilities and their families pointing out problems that I hadn't even touched on yet. Like how we're asking students with disabilities to cripple themselves with debt and don't acknowledge that PWD are far more likely to be unemployed afterwards. And I know that. People have been telling me for years about how they graduates from uni with their much-vaunted Bachelor's Degree that's going to get them $750,000 more over the course of their lifetime, and yet they can't get a single damned job because people are disinclined to hire cripples. Someone else pointed out how it's true that the government will consider a disabled student to be a full-time student with a 40% course load, but that many university programs will not, so you don't get any of the benefits offered to full-time students, such as a bus pass or access to certain courses. Someone else pointed out that the system doesn't even know how to treat students with disabilities because you call around and no one actually has answers for you. And other people whose family members have disabilities pointed out that their parents are supporting their siblings with disabilities, and yet are still expected to somehow contribute the same amount to their education that someone whose family doesn't have one or more disabled members is, as though disability isn't expensive.

I mean, these situations aren't unique. Yeah, the particular storm that Don & I are weathering - Marfan's, Cancer, and frozen vocal cords and ears that don't work and the brain chemistry of evil and all of that jazz - is probably a bit closer to rare than common, but the overall issue, the overall problem isn't.

And I may have had more to say about this but I was just informed that Tracy Latimer's murderer is now out on parole and already the hand-wringing about how tragic it is that he was forced to go to jail for murdering his daughter has started up and I think I'm going to throw up.

(Edited a sentence where I said "a year" and meant "over lifetime")

(no subject)

Y'all, netmouse is my hero of the day.

Inspired by the poem you posted and further reading about her, I created a wikipedia article about Laura Hershey. It has survived examination by other wikipedia editors and passes the tests for notability and having references but is by no means complete.

I encourage you to edit it and let others know about it so it can be filled in by those more familiar with her work than I. I'm also willing, as always, to add material given to me by people who'd rather not edit the wiki themselves.

Please pass this along. I know there are many many people in the disability community who could edit and enhance this article now that the outline is there.

Recording our history, recording our heroes, making them "notable" in Wikipedia, is such a big part of visibility, of our history. One thing I've raged about more than once is that people keep acting like disability history, disability activism, disability studies sprung out of nowhere to surprise them. Wiki is a way of combating this idea because it's something we can quickly point at, that has references.