[troubles] question of relativity

I don't know if there's something in the air but every which way I turn this evening, bad luck and dire situations appear before my eyes.

1. The sudden quadriplegic

A promising career as a policeman, a vigorous life spent in karate classes and fishing the lakes of his beloved North Carolina, future plans conjured when things were perfect -- plans that seemed irrelevant and impossible now.

It had been eight months since John shattered his C-5 vertebra diving over a wave during a family vacation. Eight months spent in either a hospital bed or that detestable chair.Eight months, also, for Marci to hunt for the miracle that just might bring him and their family back from despair.

And now, staring at her laptop, she prayed she had found it.

2. The heartless medical jobsworths

"OK, well this is the situation. I have these recurrent eye problems that I have been told to report to the hospital every time they occur as it needs immediate attention."

"No you don't. No one can see one of the doctors here without a referral."

"You don't understand. The doctors themselves have told me to ring and book an appointment every time it happens, and I have been going in to the hospital a number of times now over the past eighteen months."

"No, you haven't. No one can see a doctor without a referral."

"Check the records."

"No one can see a doctor here without a referral."

"Look I...Oh for God's sake, forget it!" And I slammed the phone down.

3. The voice in the wilderness

I am very grateful for the support of fellow bloggers. I have spoken on many occasions to her GP and various consultants; I have written to her GP and consultants; our MSP wrote to NHS Lothian all without a glimmer of success.

I have spoken to experts outwith the NHS and one from within: all have said that Mrs Carr is the type of patient they should be seeing but yet access is denied.

Mrs Carr needs help NOW!

Others need help now!!

You can help.

Let's spread this story across the web until it so big that it cannot be ignored. If you can please post about Mrs Carr's plight; please link to my posts and ask your readers to do likewise. Even if you are not in the UK please help.

As I wrote at Ginro's:

I feel this situation of yours is far worse than mine. Mine is so laughably dire that it is going to mean a total life change. That can be handled. But to endure the sort of run around you were getting, particularly with your condition, this was beyond the pale.

Allow me to explain.

There are problems which are ongoing, soul-sapping, day after day when it seems no one cares, no one will help. These are the ones described above and they're ultimately debilitating.

Then there is mine where, through one stroke of a pen in another city, the whole bottom has dropped out and I'm now living on borrowed time but even more. I must leave country X but I technically can't because country Y will not accept entry without a return entry to country X. My problem, says country X. So I can't actually move and get incarcerated for it.

Strangely, this sort of thing is not as stressful as the other type. All representations which can be made will be - it's out of my hands and is pointless now dwelling on it until there is some result. All is in the pipeline. It will be resolved. Or else it will not - no halfway house.

My health is good, the brain is operating, the only sad part is to see friends starting to shy away - people always do if they know you have an ongoing problem. They fear you're actually going to rain on their parade and so they start to schedule a dutiful time when they feel strong enough to face you.

People are human and this is natural. Cityunslicker had something vaguely close to this in this post:

Equally quite a senior manager was effectively made redundant the other day too; true to form, everyone kept their own counsel and proceeded to ignore the poor chap and carry on as normal whilst he sat there contemplating what to do. No one must mention the unmentionable, even to someone they have worked with for years and years.

This reaction, assuming the chap was reasonably well liked, is worrying. Each of the other people in that office has his own family, mortgage, commitments and his household budget is already stretched. This reaction is not exactly dog eat dog but it is sitting back and watching colleagues picked off at random and praying it will not be him. Heads down and carry on, quite understandably, of course.

That chap has now moved, in the space of ten minutes, from trusted and respected senior colleague to an embarrassing blip on the radar whom we'd like to shift out of sight as soon as poss, thank you very much, if it's all the same to you.

JMB sounds a timely cautionary note, at this point, about this negative drift in thinking and I think she's right. Plus it's always well to sign off on an optimistic note:

Try not to judge your friends too harshly, they probably feel helpless and don't know what to say so it's easier to avoid than deal with it.

In the light of that comment, my penultimate sentence: "I'll amuse myself this third last Saturday evening by packing some boxes, bumbling around and ignoring the deafening and embarrassed silence," appears less than gracious.

For me, there are better prospects than for some of the other poor blighters I could mention.