Lovely Poem

This is beautifully written and so true!!

Taken from: http://rainflowermoon.wordpress.com

I am the woman in the wheelchair who sits for four hours in a state clinic because private doctors who take Medicaid are dwindling.
I am the mother who has to bounce from pediatrician to pediatrician because no doctor I’ve found will treat my child as a human being.
I’m the person on crutches who has to miss a vital doctor’s appointment because their cab was late.
I’m the kid in school who got called names because the other kids thought I was different.
I’m the caregiver who has to deal with a despondant and/or combative person on a daily basis because it’s tougher to get services. There are too many barriers and not enough advocates.
I’m the person who can’t get help because I “make too much” even though I don’t work.
I’m the person who sits at a table in a restaurant and gets more stares than a movie star because of how I eat/drink, and who I’m with.
I’m the person who gets stares of wonder when I tell them I smoke, drink, have sex, or what have you and have someone(s) in my life who love me.
I’m the person who has been institutionalized because I was considered “different” and I should be “locked away”
I’m the person who can finally live on their own, and in their own home because people cared enough to help me defy the odds.
I’m the sibling who fought against the other kids so that my disabled brother/sister could see that there are good people in the world besides our family.
I’m the activist who won’t remain quiet until all people with disabilities are seen AS PEOPLE rather than entities that are shuffled from place to place with rights just like everyone else.
I’m the person who can’t get into a woman’s shelter because there are none that are accessible.
I’m the person who has to be treated with eggshells because the support system has no experience dealing with a survivor that happens to be disabled, regardless of gender.
I am the person who has to fight for what others take for granted.
I am the person who doesn’t want pity, but gets it anyway because of my disability.
I am the person who has to say, “No thank you, I can do it myself.” and mean it, because people don’t seem to take me seriously.I wrote this, because I felt it need to be said.

~ by Jess on April 24, 2007.

In case you were wondering…

Eating ice cream contently: Me, Karen and Pete

Random Busboy stops turns around and looks at Karen and her ice-cream.

Busboy: Are you Chinese?

Karen: um yes.

Busboy: something something something in broken Chinese

awkward silence

Busboy walks away….

everyone is sufficiently creep-ed out

In other news in my BCPS (Basic Clinical Problem Solving)  evaluation today, I got called courageous, inspirational, etc. Thankfully known of that is actually on my permanent record grade sheet (words I don’t want in my Dean’s Letter!!!). I made a really good grade overall though and gosh darn it I feel bad about it. I think I might have just gotten a gold star in school for being gimpy. Delightful. Never mind if I have a any actual PS skills lets focus on the obivious…lets mention this is also the man who told me to throw my wheelchair away.

yeah it was one of those days.

Psych Quotes!

Pysch Quotes

“This guy [Freud] is kind of like Jesus”

“Freud sat around and made crap up”

“My wife hates spiders, snakes scare the heck out of me, together we live a happy life together.”

All of them Dr. Peters

Nostaglic Formations

and thus begins a series of entries associated with Pre-Romanian-ness…..

There are lot of things that go into our identities. That make us who we are. In my life things like: Navy life, Baptist-ness, classic literature (thanks Dad), American history (yet again Thanks Dad), a lot of trees, rain, clouds animals, stars, flowers and ecology (yay Mom),Christian theology, being the oldest, being a Kniestian, theater, living in community, traveling, Wake Forest-ness, kids, Eastern Europe, being a woman…..I could go on all night. The point is that despite all these things, when circumstances are right we can change, more than we ever wanted to.
I have been journaling (the personal kind) a lot lately about how I have changed for the good and bad since college. On the one hand I think I have matured some, become less naive, more open-minded and have become a much better listener (I am such a talker naturally). On the other hand I think I have lost some of my passion for people, lost some self-confidence (a common med school problem), lost some of my spiritual focus and lost some patience. As bitter as one my other blog entries was a month ago, I think I am growing. And sometimes growing is not fun and lets face it college was FUN.

But there are things I want to reclaim take back from the pressures of med school and adult life. I FINALLY finished my Romania scrapbook this weekend.  I have been putting it off. For the first year, I was too sad about Laura dying and last year was just too crazy with graduating. But I decided I had to finish before I leave (a month from today). Its beautiful. As I looked at my pictures, read my blog entries which I printed and put in the back behind the pictures, I remembered the silly girl I was. I was so determined and so caught up in my work and those kids. It was like falling in the love for the first time. I was so blind to how big the issues I was trying to tackle were. I had so much hope, so much compassion and love to give. I know that I won’t be that girl in a month. I can’t be. But I want to learn from her. I want to carry the good parts with me and learn from my innocence. Innocence which I think I might have been pilfered from my luggage in Minsk…I supposed I shouldn’t have checked it.
For better or for worse Belarus ROCKED my faith in and patience with people. Tim’s complete disrespect for the developmentally disabled kids we were working with hardened something within me. The hardship and the endless oppression the families faced. And I think I was scared on just how much I rebelled when my well meaning host family treated me as they would treat any disabled person in their culture…like a invalid who needed to be baby-sat.  I had devoted a year of my life to fighting for these kids and I couldn’t last 8 weeks living with half of the stigma they live with. I think I felt as if I had failed. The persecution of the Protestants and minority religious groups…topped off with losing Laura so soon after I was home…all of it took the first love of Romania and covered it in the mud and mire that is reality. My Sr. year  with two of my best friends at each others’ throats and this year in med school with all its frustrations, challenges and ironies have only further disillusioned me.

But I am fighting it. I can’t change the world. I have accepted that but that doesn’t mean I have to stop trying. It also doesn’t mean I have to give up on people or the things that I love. I have been far too willing to do that at late. I can’t go back to be a silly 19 yr old. Nor do I want to. What I want to do is find a way to be a hopeful, loving, compassionate 22 yr old who is ok in her skin and knows what she is about. Who knows that a lot of things are pretty darn futile but who knows she can’t live with herself if she doesn’t try.

That my goal for the summer is to reclaim some of the fire I had before Belarus and to take some of what I learned about living under stigma in Belarus and channel it into working against it. And to come home passionate and focused on why I am in medical school and why I care about disability and children’s issues.

My belated blogging aganist Disablism Entry….

Psych is going to eat me. Seriously… THERE IS SO MUCH I DON”T KNOW!!!

And I leave you with this…

Classmate: So your friend who is speaking, she is in a wheelchair?

Me: Yep

Classmate: What’s wrong with her?

Me: She was in a car accident, she has limited use of one side of body, hemiplegia of sorts.

Classmate: But she’s in med school right?

Me: Yes at Duke.

Classmate: But how will she be a doctor? How can she examine a patient on a table?
Me: She needs a exam table that can be lowered?

Classmate: Oh. Well um…don’t be offended, but who would want someone like that as their doctor? I mean what happens when she gets in the real world?
Me: You would be suprised how many people find it oddly comforting to have someone who has been on the other side as their doctor. I would trust her as my  doctor. I suppose some people won’t  but thats their lost. I suppose I will deal with the same thing.

Classmate: See you don’t bother me so much, you aren’t really disabled. You can walk and you aren’t blind and you can hear normal and stuff.

Me: Well there is a spectrum of disabilities.

Classmate: See I see it as there are disabled people who can’t really do stuff and function and then normal people who can do stuff and you do stuff.
Me: interesting…so classes of pscyostimulants?
I’m not disabled…who knew?

yay future doctors. Go team.