TheBanyanTree: [Fwd: Re: screaming at the market (slight. POLITICAL)]

[Roger Pye]

I always forget that answers go back to originators!

roger

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: screaming at the market (slight. POLITICAL)
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:23:27 +1000
From: Roger Pye <pyewood at pcug.org.au>
To: Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu>
References: <20090822172849.m0wcv1ixog08w80o at webmail.iu.edu>

It is a hard, hard set of questions and there are no easy answers,
nothing is black and white. I have been fortunate - all my life I have
lived in countries which have a form of national healthcare; Britain
with its national health service (NHS), Australia with Medicare which
was introduced soon after I came here almost forty years ago. But
national healthcare isn't everything, doesn't cover everything, not by a
long chalk. At the moment I can't pee naturally, I haven't been able to
for nine months and I don't know whether I ever shall again. I don't
have private health insurance so the hospital stays and ops come under
elective surgery.

I didn't ask for this condition. So far as I know it just happened, I
had no part in it. But it has its upside (and, sometimes, a funny side
too) and there are much worse things. Next door to the Canberra
Environment Centre, the NGO which Robin runs and I'm the president of,
there is a business staffed by two professional bicycle mechanics who
for four days a week supervise young people with disabilities and
instruct those who have an ounce of talent in the arts of bike repair.
The young people's disabilities are described as 'mild'. There is a
young man who howls like an animal almost non-stop on the morning he is
there. Another, severely autistic, who sits on the Centre's verandah
most of the time on his morning, saying nothing. Another whose major
(and only?) topics of conversation are fishing and shoes - to be asked
repetitively where one's shoes came from is very wearing - but who loves
dogs and babies. Their parents must despair at times.

Some years ago I treated a young boy, effectively quadriplegic from
birth. I would look into his eyes and see the intelligence there, the
desire to speak and sing and actually do things for himself that he has
to rely on others to do, and my heart would break. I know that if
catastrophe came to the Earth as so many people talk about, he and
hundreds of thousands like him would tragically disappear but it makes
no difference. We have to deal with the here and now regardless of what
the causes are or of what has happened in the past or might in the
future. Children are our future whether they are our own or someone
else's. I don't often comment on other nations' politics or say what I
think should or shouldn't be done because it's really none of my
business. But on this topic I'm with President Obama all the way, no
matter the monetary cost which, let's face it, would only be a drop in
the proverbial ocean of funding which has been spent on armaments, wars
and the like.

roger

Julie Anna Teague wrote:
> 
> I went over and sat down on a wall a little way away.  A little boy, 
> mentally and physically handicapped, plopped down next to me, smiled up 
> at me and said, "HI! I'm Wyatt!"  I said, "Hi Wyatt, I'm Julie."  His 
> mom asked if he was enjoying the fiddle music behind us, and yes, he 
> was.  I asked him if he'd heard the drum group on the other side and he 
> nodded enthusiastically and started drumming on his knees.  Wyatt 
> started to wander off and his mom had to corral him, and did so with all 
> the patience in the world although you could tell it was a more than 
> full time job.  I was still shaking.  I was thinking about kids like 
> Wyatt.  Is he supposed to work for health care when he's an adult? 
>  Women like Wyatt's mom, is she supposed to work a full time job for 
> heath care?   Where does Wyatt go when she works?  What about people who 
> are heavily discriminated against in the work force?  What about the 
> handicapped?  What about people with chronic illness or disease?  
> Everyone, basically, who didn't win the genetic lottery that the white 
> guy who was screaming at me apparently won (in some respects)...what are 
> they supposed to do for health care?  I don't sleep at night thinking 
> about suffering people, suffering children.  I don't sleep at night 
> thinking about the sanctimonious asses who screamed at me.  I don't 
> sleep over a lot of things.  I'm feeling a lot of people's pain right now.
> 
> 
> Julie
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