Category Archives: happy posts

Spotlighting Kirstenbosch Garden!

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Do you know, readers, it struck me that I have never posted about South Africa’s Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden? As the Garden is both stunning and disability friendly, I do not know how this is possible! I must correct it at once.

Kirstenbosch is set on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town and, according to the website, ‘was the first botanic garden in the world to be devoted to a country’s indigenous flora’. It’s part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

Kirstenbosch is famous for its Braille Trail. Signed in Braille and large print along a guiding rope, the trail is designed specifically for blind visitors. You can read more about the Braille Trail here. It begins and ends with a fragrance garden, where the sensory emphasis is on touch and smell. Most of the garden is wheelchair accessible, including the Trail.

WheelchairThailand has a video called “Wheelchair access Kirstenbosch – South Africa”:

Video description: Video opens with a panning shot of a paved area surrounded by buildings. At the bottom is the word ‘Kirstenbosch’ in yellow. The next title is ‘Botanical garden Cape Town,’ then ‘Wheelchair friendly areas’ and then ‘South Africa’. Through this, relaxing music plays and there are shots of wheelchair users and non-wheelchair users moving about pathways, experiencing the gardens. There’s a shot of a green signpost, focusing on the ‘Braille Trail’ sign, and then a white sign titled ‘The Forest Braille Trail’. There are then shots of a Braille sign, the rope leading along the trail, and then some guinea fowl doing their guinea fowl thing. After that, we’re back to shots of wheelchair users experiencing the gardens. The ending title card says ‘produced by www.gehandicapten.com’

Address, contact details and operational hours are available here.

Recommended Reading: Comics and Graphic Novels

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As some of you may know, I am a cartoonist and graphic novel fan in addition to my regular duties blogging here at FWD. While I don’t get the “HEY ANNAHAM WHAT COMICS AND STUFF DO YOU LIKE TO READ?” query too often, I thought it might be useful to give an overview of graphic work that I think FWD readers and commenters might enjoy. Many of my recs have to do with illness and disability; a few, however, don’t. I’m always working on a new cartoon of some sort (mostly single-panel or multiple pages), and want to share the fruits of my research with folks who may want to read graphic novels, but have no clue where to start. Alternatively, some of these might make useful gifts for the holidays, either for the comics fan in your life or for yourself!

Lynda Barry: This woman is pretty much my hero. Although Barry has a background in art, her work shows that you don’t have to draw comics “realistically” for them to have an impact, or for the artwork to be strikingly beautiful. I probably would have stopped drawing autobiographical cartoons long ago were it not for her work; I do not have much artistic training to speak of, and there seems to be a widespread misconception that only “trained” artists can draw cartoons worth reading! While Barry does not address disability in her cartoons, many of her colorful slice-of-life strips bring readers back to the confusing and bizarre world of childhood and adolescence. If you were — or are — a “weird kid,” you will absolutely connect with Barry’s comics. Her 2008 creativity manual-slash-collage dreamworld What It Is may be particularly useful for the artists (or wannabe-artists), or indeed anyone who needs a push to start writing and creating; a follow-up, The Near-Sighted Monkey Book, was recently released. For those not familiar with her work, I recommend The Greatest of Marlys (a compilation of her long-running alternative comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek) and the autobiographical collection One! Hundred! Demons! to start, followed by What It Is; for those of you who like darker material involving (fictional) teenaged misadventures, drug use, and general weirdness, her illustrated novel Cruddy is a must-read.

Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (2006): Known primarily as the writer and illustrator of the alternative comic Dykes to Watch Out For (also worth checking out!), Bechdel really hits her stride with this lengthier autobiographical tale of family drama, the tensions between appearances and reality, destructive secrets, and sexual awakening. I could provide a synopsis, such as “This is a story about the writer’s complex relationship with her father,” but it is so much more than that. This is one of those books that I want to recommend to everyone who enjoys reading; it’s a work that rewards the time put into it tenfold. I get something new out of it every time I re-read it. The way that Bechdel draws facial expressions is nothing short of priceless, and the narrative as a whole is consistently amazing, complex, and intense.

Al Davison, The Spiral Cage (1989): This one can be sort of hard to track down, but: it’s very much worth the effort. Davison has spina bifida, and this graphic novel chronicles his life with both that condition and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/M.E. The result — with its many nods to surrealism, and interesting explorations of masculinity and disability, as well as spirituality — is an honest, beatifully written and illustrated look at life with multiple disabilities.

Rantz Hoseley (editor) et al., Comic Book Tattoo (2008): Do you like (or love) Tori Amos’ music? Do you enjoy comics? If so, this is probably an anthology that you will get lost in for a couple of days. I was way, way into Tori’s music before I discovered comics and graphic novels, and the amazing range of this anthology — a collection of short graphic works and interpretations inspired by the singer’s massive back-catalog — makes it worth a look. For a compendium with such a huge variety of artistic styles and song interpretations, this collection has very few duds, and the overall quality of the stories included makes it worth the $30 price tag. This is not an anthology that you will read only once and then shove it onto the bookshelf to collect dust, in other words.

Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner (with illustrations by Frank Stack), Our Cancer Year (1994): Comics writer Harvey Pekar (he died earlier this year) was known as the cranky protagonist of American Splendor, but this collaboration with his wife, peace activist and journalist Joyce Brabner, brings illness and disability into the mix, and the result is positively great. Although the Pekar-Brabner-Stack team do not gloss over the realities of cancer at all — there are ample panels, and pages, that show the gruesome, life-altering effects of testicular cancer and its harsh treatment protocol — one does not get the sense that showing the worst aspects of this disease is for shock value. As Pekar and Brabner assert at the start of Our Cancer Year, this graphic novel is not just about cancer — it is also about partnership, the everyday (or not-so-everyday), and life.

David Small, Stitches (2009): For a full-length graphic work that doesn’t use much text or dialogue, this is certainly an astonishing piece. Small, who is a children’s book illustrator, utilizes his unique artistic style for this memoir, which tells the affecting tale of his battle against cancer — and near-fatal family secrets — starting when he was 11 years old. Small’s success at creating an overarching mood in this book is difficult to describe; all of the seemingly small choices that he makes as an author and illustrator here add up to a memoir that is both harrowing and ultimately life-affirming. In a review of Stitches for PopMatters, writer Sean Ferrell comments that “[the] book does not exemplify rising above, it exemplifies the continuing, life-long struggle to release the toxic histories we drag around with us.” It is truly to Small’s credit that he has used such painful past experiences to create an unforgettable work.

Commenters, what are some of your favorite comics and graphic works?

Happy Post! Things That Make My Life … Er … Easier?

happy posts, Uncategorized

I have a love of cooking that often times taps me all the way to the bottom of my silverware drawer. I will often borrow tomorrow’s spoons to finish what I want to do today… I am sure that some of this is drawn of my stubborn and bullheaded nature.

To assist me in my passions, The Guy outfitted our tiny Korean-style kitchen with a thick, squishy mat from the local E-Mart (like a Korean department store that has groceries and household goods). It takes a ton of the strain off of my back and upper legs while I am standing for extended periods while chopping or kneading. I love it. It makes my life easier!

Apparently, I am not the only one in our home who loves it.

A light coloured wood floor with a wood-floor-looking squishy mat lying on it. There is a mound in the mat with a wee little white paw sticking out from under it.

[A wee little white paw sticks out from a wood-looking squishy mat on my wood floor. Who could it be?]

A wee bitty white-tipped black paw reaches out from under a wood-looking squishy mat, and attempts to snatch the tan toes of The Guy, clad in Navy Issued navy blue sweat pants.

Whoever it is seems to think that these tan toes look enticing! Or maybe she is defending the honor of my stolen Navy Issued sweat pants. I was looking for those!

A black cat with white whiskers and paws peeks out from under a wood-look squishy floor mat, with a serious-hunter look on her face.

Someone was playing “submarine kitteh” under the floor mat and was stalking our feet as we walked past. Of course, it rendered the mat useless, because who can walk on a mat that is being used by a kitty?

I guess it isn’t really making my life easier, but I guess that is why she came in a cute package, so that I don’t mind so much!

Hope this brightened your day just a little bit!

In praise of speech-to-text software

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One thing that has helped me quite a bit as a blogger, writer, grad student and person with chronic pain subject to flare-ups has been speech-to-text software. The basic idea is fairly self-evident: You install the software, plug in the headset that comes with it, open up the word processing program of your choice, and start talking.

Repetitive motion is one of those things that can be the bane of one’s existence if that person happens to have chronic pain issues; while there are people who might say, Oh, typing at a computer can’t be that painful or Just work through the pain or some other ridiculous piece of “advice,” typing can, at times, be enormously painful or draining for some folks with pain issues. No matter how much one may want to complete a piece, post or assignment, sometimes it just will not happen due to pain. When it feels like your hands are encased in cement blocks, there is no “working through the pain.” Having your hands and wrists feel like they have been set on fire by pain when you are on a deadline — like a lot of circumstances surrounding pain flares — can be excruciating. It’s kind of like having your hands and wrists feel like the Human Torch, but without any of the cool superpowers.

With speech-to-text, the additional pain brought on by repetitive typing is significantly reduced, as it takes at least some of the typing (but not editing, as I will address below) out of the equation. There are some additional issues to consider, however: one is “fibro fog,” the name given to some of the cognitive effects of a fibromyalgia flare, which can, for the person experiencing the flare, make it difficult to put thoughts, words and sentences together with anything resembling coherency. This is more of a condition issue than one that has to do with typing, but it’s fairly obvious as to how fibro-fog could impact the use of text-to-speech: if your thoughts are jumbled because of pain and fatigue, it’s likely that they will be just as jumbled regardless of whether you are typing or speaking into a text-to-speech headset. I’m fairly lucky with fibro-fog myself, as it tends to be rather mild unless I am experiencing a pain flare that feels closer to acute pain than chronic, but typing is one of those processes that can seem bizarrely confusing during a massive pain flare-up (and the whole “simple things as confusing” side effect is damn near impossible to truly understand unless you’ve been through it).

Of course, there are some aspects of text-to-speech software that are less than perfect: similar to the iPhone’s auto-correct feature (some of the amazing slip-ups of which have been documented by websites such as Damn You Autocorrect),  speech-to-text software can “read” one spoken word or phrase as something else entirely, sometimes producing hilarious (or irritating) fragments that often make no sense within the context of what you are actually writing. My personal favorite thus far has been my speech-to-text program “translating” Judith Butler as Judas butt lark, which made me wonder if I need to work on my pronunciation skills if only for the convenience of my software program.

There is also the cost issue: many speech-to-text software programs are expensive. In a utopia, everyone who could benefit from text-to-speech programs would have a reliable and fairly-priced one ready for use. I’m one of those weirdos who thinks that accessible technology should not be something available only to those who can afford to pay for it, but that, unfortunately, is most likely a long time coming.

Happy post: Winston

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Image shows a small silver and blond Yorkshire Terrier with its two front legs up on a railing in an outdoor setting, its red leash off to the right side. It is photographed from a high angle

[Image description: image shows a small silver and blond Yorkshire Terrier with its two front legs up on a railing in an outdoor setting, its red leash off to the right side. It is photographed from a high angle.]

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and have never quite known how to start it. I’ll start with this: like a lot of PWDs, I have a pet. I’m sure that posting something about one’s beloved dog on what is a strongly political site seems unusual, but as of late I have been reading many dog-related blogs (mostly on Tumblr) and am consistently moved by posts where the submitter talks about their pet and some of the many varied aspects of the human/animal bond.

I have a pretty old (for the breed) Yorkshire Terrier named Winston. While he is not a service dog (he is too ill-behaved to ever serve in that capacity, and I suspect that fibromyalgia is not a condition that qualifies for a service animal!), he makes my life immeasurably better. Oh, he’s kind of a brat, but his general attitude is so completely, bizarrely happy most of the time that I can’t help but smile whenever he’s around. Yorkshire Terriers are supposed to be one of the smarter (albeit louder) small breeds, but Winston is not the brightest bulb around. This is not a bad thing, however — his other personality traits make up for the fact that he can’t do very many tricks (outside of sitting, particularly if food is involved).

Small dogs, in general, may seem like they’re a pain in the ass to take care of, at least to outsiders. Certainly, there are some small dogs with very high energy (I’ve met a few) who need to be walked multiple times per day so that their owners can get some relief from the dogs’ barking or constant need for attention. Fortunately for me, Winston is not one of these. He has a lot of energy, but this is mostly because he sleeps upwards of 10 hours per day. On days when I’m not feeling well and need to lie down or take a nap, Winston is more than happy to hang out. If I am in too much pain to take him on a long walk, he seems perfectly happy with a shorter walk. All things considered, he’s a pretty mellow, fairly agreeable little dog — except for when he sees other dogs, which is very often an occasion for over-excitement, and possibly a lot of barking and/or straining on the leash.

Somewhat hilariously, he also snores. Loudly.

The 2010 Don’t DIS My ABILITY Campaign Has Kicked Off!

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People. People. I cannot even tell you how excited I am. In November-December in New South Wales, the awesome-est state in Australia[1. My esteemed co-blogger Lauredhel might disagree with me there.], we have a little something called the Don’t DIS My ABILITY campaign. There are loads of events run around the state leading up to the International Day of People with a Disability.

My personal favourite bit is the campaign magazine, Made You Look. You may remember that Lauredhel wrote about playground accessibility for disabled parents for the magazine last year. This year, Ouyang Dan and I both contributed pieces. OYD’s is on ableist language and is called “Think before you speak,” mine are “Type (re)Cast,” about popular culture representations of PWD, and “Seen and not heard,” on my experiences of being young and disabled. If you’re in NSW, you can pick up a hardcopy at your local library, all over Sydney and at loads of regional newsagencies (full list of places you can obtain the mag here). If you are elsewhere, you can download a copy, in one go or in sections, if that’s easier.

But that’s not all! Check out the Don’t DIS blog. I’m going to be writing there over the next month about such topics as who gets to speak about disability advocacy, narratives of disabled laziness, where conversations about disability tend to stop, body image while disabled and what respecting disabled people means. You yourself can participate: check out this post about blogging for the campaign here.

It’s going to be a fabulous month, readers.

Connections

activism, happy posts, introspective, Thank yous

Chally pointed out to me the other day that I was coming up on 100 posts. If scheduling goes right, this should be it. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I noticed, but I wasn’t sure if I should mention it. She has a knack for making people feel proud of things, no matter how trivial they seem to a person, she can make it seem like you’ve won the Pulitzer on your worst day.

It’s funny, the things you learn over the course of all of those 100 posts, or at least I did. Also funny are the way we assign value to things as arbitrary as numbers. Why is this post more important than the next or my last? Why does the first death in a war mean more or less than the 1,000th? Some people have written more, and some less, and for each of us our number is irrelevant. For me, I have a thing about marking out nice round things in ordinal series. Some birthdays are a bigger deal to me I suppose, though my mother remembers all of the recent ones.

It is, instead, what we put in and take away from a moment that matters more so than the number.

I, back when I first started blogging back at my humble little blog, wanted to be part of a group blog. Not for page hits or attention, but to be part of something. To feel that sense of belonging to a group, of being with people who had a sense of purpose. So many things in my life were constantly in disarray, and I wanted… no, honestly I needed something to feel connected to.

And it took a while, but by a random happenstance I was in the right place at the right time, and fell in with a remarkable group of people who came together to channel something hurtful into something positive, because instead of allowing ourselves to be angry, we decided to focus on being a force for change. Thus, did my life take me in a direction I never saw it going, because I had just begun to grasp onto this part of me that was OK with identifying as someone who is disabled. Not only that, I had not really learned how to interact with other people who identified that way. I was shy about venturing out as any kind of public face, let alone as any kind of self-spoken authority. Who was I, I wondered, to pretend that what I had to say mattered?

But I found out that it did matter. Not because, necessarily, that anything particular I had to say matter, but that I took a brave step and spoke up. I have always felt that the shortcomings in my life — my lack of college degree or extensive career — made me less of a credible person. What I found here was that it is the way we, as a community, relate to one another. I found that here I have a voice that matters, if not to many people, perhaps to just a few, perhaps to just one, and if I am brave enough perhaps I can be the advocate for that one person. If one person feels connected to this the way I finally feel connected then I feel that it has been worth all the tears and heart that have been poured into these 100 posts over these past months.

Even more, I found that these remarkable people, these co-contributors and founding members, have become something so deeply ingrained in my life now that not a day goes by that I don’t think of every single one of them and how they have impacted my life. I think about the way that Anna taught me to look at everything I see and think about how it could be more accessible and not to feel bad about demanding that it be so, and how lauredhel reminds me that part of being a good mum is teaching more independence because it leaves me more spoons to enjoy the fun times. I am reminded of the way that K-0 uses words artfully and lovingly, and the way that Amandaw reminds me of myself sometimes with her fierceness to defend fellow PWD. I think about Chally, who is often there at the right moment with the exact right thing to say, and abbyjean, who has a knack for looking at things from a different angle and getting to the quick of it. I can’t forget annaham, who was the first person to reach out to me and help me identify with my disability and to realize it is OK to be unsure of myself and to find strength in asking for help, and I can’t forget s.e. smith whose passion holds it all together and who sees the way everything is connected.

All of these lives have become intertwined with mine, irrevocably. All of you have become a part of it, for the part you play in reading these posts, linking them, sending them around the tubes of inter. We have all made connections and many of us have touched and impacted one another’s lives in many ways. There is amazing power in that… or, there has been for me, anyway. It is what has made the FWD dashboard the first thing I look at on a day I can work and the last thing I check before bed on the same.

I just wanted you to all know that. This is what I have taken away from these 100 posts, and I hope that is what I have put into them for you. That we, as a community of people who want social change for people with disabilities, have reached out and touched across the expanse of space and time, to be slightly cliche. You have impacted me, taught me, and given me more than I deserve, but given me everything that I had been searching for. I hope that through my learning, screwing up, and trying to get it right, I have done a decent job for you all. All of you, contributor and community member alike.

Thank you.

Things That Make My Life Easier: Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab

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[Image description: Four bottles of perfume in front of and resting upon some books; the bottles are labeled “Australian Copperhead,” “Banded Sea Snake,” “Cottonmouth,” and “Asp Viper,” respectively. Image courtesy of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab.]

Today, I am taking a page from amandaw’s awesome series “Things That Make My Life Easier” and have chosen to spotlight the fantastically scented goodness of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. As a person with chronic pain, I have found that certain things having to do with the five senses that take my mind off of my pain — even for a few minutes — makes dealing with pain and fatigue much, much easier. While I am unsure of the scientific veracity of perfume oils and their use in general life-improvement for folks with pain issues (in my case, fibromyalgia, which for me usually causes intense muscle pain and moderate to severe fatigue), I have personally benefited from wearing the complex and often surprising essential oil blends in which the Lab specializes. While smelling nice certainly won’t bring my physical pain down from, say, an 8 to a 1 (on a scale of 1 to 10), many of these blends have helped me to relax, focus on a different sort of physical sensation that is not abjectly, horrendously painful, and generally be more comfortable as I go about my day.

Besides a “General Catalogue” consisting of hundreds of scents—all inspired by a diverse mix of people (comic-book heroes and heroines; H.P. Lovecraft), places (the “Wanderlust” line, which offers scents inspired by famous locales) and things (love [image on page is NSFW], myth and fairy tales, classic art, religion and spirituality, and Alice in Wonderland, to name just a few)—BPAL also offers Limited Edition blends. Currently, they are offering their annual Fall/Halloween scents; if you’ve ever wanted to smell like an apple orchard, fall leaves and smoke, or Halloween candy, one (or more) of these oils may be for you.

It is next-to-impossible for me to pick favorite blends, as mine seem to change by the day. There are a few that I consistently utilize, however: Blood Kiss is a bizarrely dark blend of vanilla, clove and cherry that I’ve been wearing for years (I’m on my third bottle of the stuff). Absinthe is effervescent, minty and (obviously) boozy. When I want to smell sort of like a head shop sans the moldy undertone, a couple drops of Sin do the trick. Aquatic scents seem to be my most-used “category,” with the salty, swampy Bayou being the one that I reach for most often, tied with the Limited Edition Sturgeon Moon (the latter is no longer available, unfortunately). The smoky, slightly citrusy goodness of Carnaval Diabolique (part of a sprawling LE series of the same name) makes for a great late summer/early fall scent, as does the sharp, lavender-tinged Casanova.

Of course, the very fact that I wear essential oil perfumes brings up another issue — how to be sensitive and accommodating to fellow PWDs who may have scent sensitivities, allergies, or who may have otherwise painful reactions to scented stimuli. When I’m planning to be out and about, I tend to wear a drop or two at most, usually applied with a q-tip, and allow ample time for the oil to dry before I leave the house; this is not a perfect solution, but I am still figuring out how to balance the benefits that I personally get from wearing these amazingly-crafted oils with the needs of other PWDs whom I may encounter in public.

A.I. spotlight: Keepon and Paro

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At the risk of understatement, exciting things are happening when it comes to robotics and artificial intelligence and the potential applicability of these fields in the lives of PWDs.

[Description: A small, bright yellow robot with two eyes and a black nose stands in front of a white background. Outlined in orange and bright blue, the robot leans slightly to the left while it sits atop a small black pedestal]  Image courtesy of this page on the CMU website.

The little ‘bot pictured above is Keepon, developed by Hideki Kozima and Marek Michalowski at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Keepon’s purpose is to interact with children with emotional, neurological or sensory processing disorders, and who otherwise may have difficulty interacting with other children, relatives, or caregivers. However, Keepon has become something of an internet sensation in recent years, most notably when a 2007 video of the robot dancing to Spoon’s “I Turn My Camera On” became extremely popular on YouTube, and inspired a Wired Magazine-backed promo video for Spoon featuring Keepon. As this 2008 excerpt (accessibility warning: video is not close-captioned) from Discovery Channel’s show “The Works” demonstrates, there is quite a bit of potential for Keepon’s original purpose; it may be cute (and a great dancer), but the potential for this sort of technology to help children with disabilities is worth further exploration.

A New York Times article from this past July, written by Amy Harmon, discussed another A.I. creature, Paro, which is made to resemble a seal cub. Paro was first developed by Takanori Shibata, a researcher working at Japan’s national science institute AIST.  The NYT article describes Paro thusly:

Paro is a robot modeled after a baby harp seal. It trills and paddles when petted, blinks when the lights go up, opens its eyes at loud noises and yelps when handled roughly or held upside down. Two microprocessors under its artificial white fur adjust its behavior based on information from dozens of hidden sensors that monitor sound, light, temperature and touch. It perks up at the sound of its name, praise and, over time, the words it hears frequently.

The whole article is worth a read, as it covers the success that some senior residential communities in the U.S. have had with using Paro as an assistive device — sort of akin to animal therapy without an actual animal (which might cause problems for, say, residents with allergy issues) — for some residents.  There is also a video at the NYT’s website (unfortunately, sans transcript) that shows Paro in action. The article also discusses at length some of the benefits of this sort of technology, as well as some of its limitations.

Of course, Keepon and Paro are only two examples of the amazing possibilities of artificial intelligence, and it remains to be seen as to whether this technology — which, like many new technologies, currently comes with a rather hefty price tag — can be made more accessible to people or organizations that cannot afford to pay $6,000 U.S. for a Paro. Hopefully, these A.I. breakthroughs will not be as pricey in the future, and will be made accessible to a wider variety of people — including PWDs.

Why am I surprised by this?

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To begin, rather pithily: I have had very mixed experiences with medical professionals throughout my life. Some have been fantastic. Some have been middle-of-the-road. And, as you might expect to hear from a person with a chronic pain condition, some have been absolutely awful.

Recently, I had a fantastic experience in a consultation with the oral surgeon who will be — at the time of this writing — removing the three wisdom teeth that I have in my skull [note: by the time this post is up, I will be recovering from the surgery and therefore on a bit of a break from blogularly goings-on]. Given my past experiences with medical professionals, I was not optimistic going into the consultation. I have a pretty spotty history when it comes to dental sensitivity, have been labeled an “anxious” patient in the past because of said sensitivity issues, and thus have a mountain of concerns about surgical procedures because of the medical conditions that I already have — cerebral palsy and fibromyalgia among them.  I was fully expecting that the surgeon would either minimize and perhaps outright dismiss my concerns during this appointment; worse, he might actively resist giving me anything other than over-the-counter pain medications for what is known as being a very painful procedure, as fibromyalgia patients seem to have a reputation as being “drug-seeking” among some people in the medical community and in the popular imagination at large (to say nothing of the ridiculousness of getting one’s wisdom teeth removed as a method of obtaining prescription drugs).

Interestingly, this was one of those times where I would be happy to be wrong. The oral surgeon not only explained the actual procedure to me in great detail, but listened very patiently to my concerns about possible issues due to increased pain (possibly relating to fibro, as it tends to flare up after any medical procedure that involves high doses of medication that I do not normally take) and muscle spasms (that would be the cerebral palsy, which has left me with muscular weakness on the left side of my body and occasional spasm attacks in my left leg). He also asked many questions about both the fibro and the CP, and reassured me that he and his staff would watch for things relating to each condition that could possibly occur during and after the procedure.

This consultation — and the oral surgeon’s taking my concerns so seriously — was a welcome break from the fighting-an-uphill-battle-with-my-bare-hands sort of feeling that I’ve gotten from some past medical and health-related consultations. I am, of course, of the opinion that these sorts of positive experiences should not be this unusual, and that they apparently are so unusual gives me pause for a myriad of reasons.