It is quite sad that the disabled have the hardest time in getting a job and when they do it is usually a low paying job tied to a boss that thinks they are stupid. Even in the best of financial times it is difficult for the disabled to find a good job. In this complete meltdown of many sectors of our economy makes it all but impossible for the disabled to get good employment. We are competing with people that are over qualified for a position but is in need of money to keep their house and car that they will do almost any job. So the low end jobs are going to engineers with master’s degrees that would never take that job except that there is nothing available in their market and they have been out of work for the last 18 months. The only answers I can think of is schooling and working for yourself. Because many of us are on SSDI or worse, it is very easy to get money to go to school – all the way to PhD. That would give anyone a huge boost in their ability to get a job and to increase their income. Of course it is a lot of work over many years, but then again nothing that is worthwhile is simple or easy. So we get to decide what we will do with our lives, sit at home staring at the boob tube, or get off our collective wheelchairs and get back to school and work.

There are many positions for teching available for secondary as well as college and research. I have found that schools are much more willing to take a chance on someone that is disabled than a company and they are easier to work for. Some universities are willing to put you through school to fill a job that they cannot find qualified people for. At a public university in Florida I saw a position open for a mathematical researcher and the school was willing to put you through to a PhD for free if you were willing to work at the university for five years. Not a bad deal – you get awesome paperwork and schooling for free along with a good job with benefits for the next five years or more. Stuff is out there for us, but we need to look for it and let the able bodied know that we are no different than they are, we are just stuck in a movable chair.

The disabled are usually at the bottom of the poor, unable to pay for good medical care or housing. At least there are government programs in the United States to make sure that the disabled can take care of themselves and their families. Without these safety nets, the disabled have no way of working to take care of themselves or to pay for needed medical care or drugs. The government of Haiti will need to think about how they are going to care for people that cannot care for themselves. Just thowing the disabled to the wolves and forgetting about them is not the way to do this. Add the pubic stigma of being disabled and you have a recipe for disaster. With no government help and most companies refusing to hire the disabled and you have a group that is guaranteed to starve to death on an island that they have no way of getting off of. The United Nations has a significant group on the ground in Haiti that is used for peacekeeping but can and should be used to help the disabled. There should never be a group that is so shunned that they are allowed to starve to death with no medical help and no one cares. Especially where these people are disabled because they were the victim of a natural disaster, they did not create their problem, they are just trying to live through it. There must be rehab programs put in place to help the newly disabled to get the most out of their situation and to train them for jobs that they can do. Everyone wants to be useful and to work and take care of themselves and their family.

Unfortunately the disabled are usually the ones that are the first to be laid off and that employers take advantage 9of those workers because they know how important the salary is. There are laws in place to protect the disabled so they will not be discriminated against but there are few agencies that are able to enforce the law. Even if the disabled person can prove that they have been discriminated against they need the money to hire a lawyer to go after the employer. If they do go after the company then they can be fired for other reasons. So most times the disabled just deal with the discrimination and hope that they can hang on to the job until the economy gets better and they can get another job.The government is working on a new law to protect the disabled workers called the "Equality Bill" and Parliament is discussing it. People that have been discriminated against are asked to contact their MP and let them know what happened and what could be done to fix the situation. Until this bill is passed into law the disabled will not have the same protections as the able bodied and will have to put up with unsavory managers that take advantage of their situation.

This is good news for the disability groups that were complaining that many of the candidates in the United States were not making their speeches and other materials available with captioning. This made it very difficult for disabled voters to get a true picture of where the candidates sat on particular issues and forced many to pick those candidates that did provide their materials in captioning. That is truly sad that candidates received votes merely because they made materials available in captioning because the other candidates didn’t think that the disabled were an important enough group to follow. The candidates need to remember that as the baby boomer generation ages they will become blind and hard of hearing over time. They will need to have things likme captioning from all the candidates or they will have to think that those that do not support those technologies are not disabled friendly. With all the problems that the disabled have just staying alive and well on a daily basis, fighting with their elected officials to gain access to the same things that the able bodied get for granted is not something we will put up with.

It is sad that after all these years we have myopic management that does not know how to deal with the disabled. The disabled are looked as as somehow "broken" and unable to do any task at all. Instead of looking at all the jobs that can be done from a sitting position, the worker is tossed out and an able bodied worker is hired in their place. How are the disabled expected to take care of themselves and get off of federal aid if we are tossed out of work because management has no idea that we still have brains and can do many of the tasks we used to do. Paraplegics can do virtually any desk or computer job with few changes, if any to the environment. Perhaps the company needs to do a better job of hiring managers that do not look at the disabled as useless junk to be removed from the facility as soon as possible. There are many people that hate the disabled and cannot stand to be around them. This discrimination is disgusting and should be vetted from every company. There is no place in management for someone that cannot work with the disabled.

This a shot across the bow against haters of the disabled, and the companies who hire them. Managers should know the law and there is no reason why new hire training does not include info on the ADA. Why create a situation where you can and may well be sued if you can easily get around it. Disabled people work just as hard as anyone else and research shows they are a good fit in any organization. It is amazing how much griping disappears when everyone sees what a disabled person has to do to get their job done. Think about it the next time someone in a wheelchair is at your company looking for a job.

One would think that this was the script from a “B” movie in Hollywood, but states all over the country are debating the use of the New York protocols to determine what to do during an emergency and how to ration supplies that run low during a virus outbreak. However, public opinion has been strongly against any kind of rationing like this, and officials have worked hard to keep the public out of meetings that discuss these protocols. Our only safety net is that most states have not implemented this plan as law and most are worried what would happen to public opinion if they did put it into law. While officials are trying to state that this is for the national good and that work must be done to make sure medical care is available neglect to explain how this is going to occur. No one in any meetings to discuss the New York Protocols are willing to say that the will take ventilators and other lifesaving medical equipment from a person merely because they are disabled. We have not heard of something this sinister since the Nazi plan to rid the Reich of people that were “broken or not whole”. People that were forced to live in nursing homes because of disabilities were carted off to the same killing centers that the Jews were sent to. This law appears to allow the state to do the same type of thing under the veil of doctors and hospitals trying to give care to those that desperately need it.

People that live in states that frequently have disasters like Florida, Louisiana and California need to look carefully and see what their state officials are working on in this arena. If your state is looking to implement the New York Protocols you need to call everyone you know to put a stop to it. If this is allowed to become law then the governor of your state can decide at will that the disabled do not deserve to live and will be denied medical care that they may need to survive because others are felt to have a better chance to live. The control of life at this level is disgusting and it is sad that any doctors would be willing to put time and effort to make this a reality. No one should have the basic right to control who lives and who dies without having the family involved.

 Further problems were found in availability of clinics, tests for medical conditions and pills to control long term conditions. The disabled ran a much greater risk of hearing and visual problems as well as hypertension, obesity and a lack of instructions on how to deal with medical conditions. This creates an environment where those with good medical insurance have access to doctors that are trained to help their patients over a wide range of issues where the disabled typically have to deal with newly graduated doctors that do not have the training or experience to work with those with complicated medical issues. Since the medical infrastructure of the United States is on treating a problem rather than prevention, medical care is much more expensive than virtually anywhere else in the world.

Rather than working to make sure people do not get the flu or popular issues like hypertension or smoking, the medical community and insurance companies waits until the patient is severely sick before they get the care they need. This means that more disabled die or end up with additional medical conditions as compared to the able bodied that have corporate based medical insurance. Many pills are not available on Part B Medicare because they are new and expensive, and most companies have virtually non-existent system to help pay for drugs. This is especially true for those with chronic pain, where most pain medication is prohibitively expensive. As the body requires higher and higher doses to get the same pain relief level, stronger medications are required – that are not covered. Even if the medications are covered, the patient is only covered for the first $2700, after that the patent is on their own for the next $2000 before catastrophic care kicks in.

 This all creates an environment where preventative care is non-existent and only very expensive care is available. While this care is great for those that can afford it, for those that are either on Medicare or no plan at all live in excruciating pain or with out of control blood pressure because there is no treatment that the poor can afford. While there may be plans to help the public, the ADA is typically ignored by companies and cities that find it is easier to get sued than it is to build to code. We all need to work together so that the laws are followed and actually help the disabled to live a more normal life.

Most elected officials are lawyers so one would think and hope that they could have some idea what the law of the land is. For those that are not lawyers, they need to get up to speed quickly as these people are making laws that effect all of us. We need to think carefully before creating new laws as they may be in violation of state or national law. The Americans for Disabilities Act is a federal law that requires that all states follow it. This includes city councils as well. Service animals are allows to go virtually anywhere that  a disabled person goes and that is the end of it. The disabled person needs that animal to get around and to help them do their daily tasks like shopping, working, or going to a city council meeting. It is sad that the mayor actually said that he was shocked that people actually thought they had the right to show up to a public meeting that will directly effect them. Maybe the mayor believes that laws and rules should be made in a vacuum without the benefit of hearing from those that live in his city? In our country, all of our voices are important which is why we have the 1st amendment to the constitution and we all have the right to vote for those that make our rules and laws. It is expected that we are listened to and that changes are made based on what the public wants.

The present work on changes to our medical system demands that we let congress know what we want. The President set up town halls meetings to hear what we had to say. Congressmen and senators have been listening to phone calls, faxes, emails, and letters from constituents that care about what happens to health care in this country. No where does it say that if you are disabled, please get lost. We didn’t hear the proclamation that if you have a service animal please do not show up to the town hall meeting. On the contrary, it was expected that the disabled would show up since they are dealing with the health care system know and would be the best people to hear what should be changed. Why are these meetings different than a city council meetings? Our congressmen understand how important it is to listen to what the voters what as they can be voted out of office if they don’t. This city council looked like they wanted to hand down their own edicts without understanding federal law and what the disabled are allowed to do.

The disabled have rights just like everyone else and special laws were passed to make sure everyone understood that. Unfortunately there are those that don’t want to see the disabled and wish they would go away. There were laws called "ugly" laws that were passed to get rid of the disabled so the rest of the population didn’t need to see them. The ADA forced those laws out of existence and made sure that the disabled had access to the same rights as everyone else. They can buy homes wherever they want, can own a car, go to college and have a family. They do not have to ask for permission or get a sign off before they have a child. Additional rights were given so that the disabled could interact with others, which included service dogs. Congress understood that the disabled needed more help and gave the disabled the right to get animal helpers and allowed them to go wherever the disabled person goes. Hopefully these stories will help to stop civil rights violations and let the country know what is going on. That is why we have freedom of the press…something that some people in this country wished didn’t exist either. We have a lot of work ahead of us to make this an equal country, but there are plenty of folks that want this to be so lets work together to make it reality.

Partners Against Pain release articles about all aspects of pain that are very useful. The two newest guides are now available for download:

1. Free resource guide

2. Print copy order form

There are very few places on the Internet that are good references for pain because so little medical work goes into it. None of the major medical research companies have released a major pain killer in some time. We are left with older medication that is based on opioid which are both addictive and require increasing dosages to keep up with the same level of pain. Fentanyl is quite powerful but it does not have a good safety margin for the amount of time it has been on the market. Many patients have over dosed on the drug because they did not understand how important it was to keep within the dosage given by their doctor. SCRN hopes that this resource guide gives you some help in the search for help on pain issues. Many doctors do not treat chronic pain because they either do not believe that this kind of pain exists or this is an excuse for a drug seeker to gain access to their drug of choice.

Before going to a doctor or the hospital for pain treatment you should bring a print out of your complete history including drugs and previous doctors. Get the phone numbers, fax numbers, and addresses for all your doctors so a hospital can quickly get hold of someone when you are in too much pain to remember. This document will also show the hospital that you are serious about getting help by showing everything that is happening with you. With this document you will no longer have to fill out their super long document that asks for every little thing including dates and customer numbers. Dealing with hospitals when you are in excruciating pain is bad enough without having to deal with their mountain of paperwork before they will even look at you. Anything that speeds up this process and gets your doctors up to speed is well worth the effort. Also, don’t forget to bring a dozen copies of your document to hand out to doctors and nurses as you work your way from triage to hospital bed.