Some Things Are Just Worth Screaming About

Ballastexistenz posted a quite fascinating entry about a run-in with one of her caregivers where she was in so much pain that she was really having trouble communicating with this person and he told her he would not help her until she was able to "respect" him the way he "respected" her.

Wow.

Was this poor devil told in advance he was going to work with someone with autism?

I strongly suspect my Old Man of having Asperger's, a very mild form of autism, and if you think you can get it through his skull the finer subtleties of being "respectful" without causing him to stop speaking to people altogether, you've got another think coming.

Come on now, we're talking about Ballastexistenz, presumably in a really stunning amount of pain. If you get anything less than a life-threatening thrashing you should consider yourself fortunate.

It also puts me in mind of some of the run-ins my mother has had with her keepers. Turns out a couple of facilities ago she warned the staff that this one poor old devil was not longer competent to be smoking and, yep, sure enough, after a little while the poor old devil burned himself up.

My mother was livid, furious, and apparently publicly questioning whether the parents of her keepers had ever been married.

They put her in the full-blown looney bin for a couple of weeks after that.

Some of the comments to the Ballastexistenz post are quite fascinating as well - a tale of woman in labor being told to quiet down because she was "being disruptive".

I myself once, while coming out of anesthesia was having a terrible time catching my breath and I started swearing a mile a minute - partially because I was in incredible pain, and also to try to "kick start" my nervous system. I was told that I had to calm down because I was being taken to a recovery room full of "little old ladies".

I find the choice of words in the one comment interesting - "to make it seem like the establishment is maintaining 'control' over the patient".

Oh is that what it is?

Of course if she thinks her caregivers are being injust, Ballastexistenz should try to endure a white collar work environment for even a couple of days. If you're other than terminally stoic in such a setting they think you're "not a team player" or, worse, a "loser".

Another comment on Ballastexistenz posting reads:

Just thinking about and considering that kind of unjust behavior tends to make me want to jump up and down and violently flap my limbs. And cuss, too.

I got so upset, a few years ago, at an injustice I’d heard about on the radio, that I jumped all over the room I was in, and came down wrong on one foot and hurt (not quite sprained) an ankle.

And I don’t think I’m all that autistic.

Well, apparently there must be SOMETHING wrong with you.

In this culture, if ANYTHING moves you to getting upset, it seems that people thing you're "damaged goods" of some sort ...