Becoming Disabled On the Job

In the months after I was hired at my first adult job — the thing I had studied for, for over ten years — my immediate supervisor informed me from behind his desk that they had hired a thoroughbred. I looked down at my mixed race hands. Oblivious, he continued, “We just have to see if you can run.” At the very beginning of my second year on the job, my disablement process started. “I see that our thoroughbred has gone lame.” In my third year on the job, when my legs were an utter mess and I was stumbling around on two canes, I sat in his office away from the desk on a comfy chair. I felt like this was no longer a professional talking to; I was a visitor on the soft chair. We were both silent for a while, reflecting (so I like to think) on the wreck that I had become.

Does XKRV cause CFS?

A bunch of people have linked me to articles about research documenting the presence of the XMRV retrovirus in CFS patients. Most of the articles are flat out stating that this will probably lead to a test and/or cure for CFS.

I wish these articles (especially ones aimed at a non-scientific audience) would clearly distinguish between correlation and causation.

How not to buy a wheelchair

6. Head to Colonial Medical Supplies. Because, to repeat the point, you have been assured by no less of an authority than Cigna that products purchased with a prescription at Colonial Medical Supplies will be covered by Cigna.

7. Be informed, kindly and regretfully, by a sales agent at Colonial Medical Supplies that in point of fact, they do not have an account with Cigna and that products, including wheelchairs, purchased at Colonial Medical Supplies, with or without a prescription, will not be covered by Cigna, and that in actual fact Cigna has never paid for any supplies purchased at Colonial Medical Supplies. “They keep sending people to us,” the agent says. “I don’t know why.”