Accessibility takes too goddamn fucking long.
My brother was paralyzed in October 2023. We got him home from the hospital (in Texas, when we live in Iowa) in a clunky old hospital chair. He hated it. He was scared and angry and in pain and his life had just changed forever and he couldn’t do anything for himself in that wheelchair. His first goal (aside from learning how to transfer) was to get a wheelchair. My family was lucky enough to afford one so we thought it would be easy enough. Nope.
We couldn’t buy him a wheelchair. He needed a prescription. For a wheelchair. A doctor had to examine him and declare him in need of a wheelchair. It wasn’t good enough that he had scans and tests showing tumors cutting off his spinal cord. He needed his primary care doctor to examine him during a physical and write a prescription. He was making 2-4 transfers a day, tops. He had no energy to get to a doctor. Home health was in and out every day. He had no time to get to a doctor. He didn’t get a prescription for almost a month. Then it had to go through insurance.
We asked if we could skip insurance and just buy a wheelchair for him. Nope. They wouldn’t sell us one, not even at full sticker price. It needed to be approved by Medicare. We ordered a wheelchair, a nice one, a good shade of green, sporty, small. It would let him move around the house. He would be able to cook, to reach drawers and get stuff from the fridge and brush his teeth and put his contacts in at a sink. We were told it would take awhile, maybe two months. Silently we all hoped he would be around to see two more months.
He went on hospice care on a Saturday in March. On Monday, I was calling his friends to come see him before he died. I got a call on his phone. It was the wheelchair company. They were about to order his wheelchair, she said, but there was an issue with insurance— had he stopped being covered by Medicare? Well, yes. When he started hospice care, he got kicked off Medicare. The very nice woman I talked to told me to call her if he resumed Medicare coverage so she could order his wheelchair. He died less than 12 hours later.
We ordered that chair for him in early December. Medicare didn’t approve the order until March. He was dead before they got around to it. He wanted that fucking wheelchair so badly. The only reason he had any semblance of independence and any quality of life for the last five months of his life was because the wheelchair company lent him an old beater chair, a very used model of the chair he ordered. If I could go back and change one thing about his end-of-life, I would get him his dream wheelchair. He told me again and again he couldn’t wait to get it, so that he could feel like a person again. He made the best of what he had with that old beater chair, but it still makes me mad to this day. He was paralyzed. He needed a chair that afforded him dignity. We had the money for it. And yet, we were left waiting for five months, for a chair that wouldn’t even get ordered until the day he died.
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i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.
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I'm writing this post to bring attention to the GFM campaign of @salahmanarfamily / @salahahmed90, a father of two in Gaza.
Salah has been working hard to promote his family's campaign every day for almost a month now, and yet, despite all the effort he's put in, they've only received a little over 70 donations.
If you have money to spare, please consider donating!
This is a campaign that is very low on funds.
-> GFM Link
The campaign has been verified by @/90-ghost.
€1,572 / €70,000
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Things That Happen In Gravity Falls Without Context
It's implied that rich people control their children with a bell
A single episode is shockingly reminiscent of both Five Night's at Freddy's and Doki Doki Literature Club. This episode came out 3 years before DDLC and one month after FNAF
Mabel kisses Strong Bad
There are two clones of the main character that are still alive and living in the woods
Larry King confirms that llamas are nature's greatest warriors
An old couple is killed by rap music
One of the scariest monsters in the show is eaten alive and loves every second of it
Neil Cicierega wrote a song for it that was unfortunately never used (yes, seriously)
Everyone in the town is a tad strange, except, ironically, Cecil from Welcome to Night Vale
Boy bands are kept as pets
A character proves she is pure of heart by performing a drug bust on gnomes (this does not work)
Zombies are defeated by Ke$ha
The most discourse-generating part of the show is a 12 year old giving a time traveler a snowglobe
And old man almost fucks a spider
When someone tells you they don't have a tattoo, believe them.
Fucking up a science fair will inevitably lead to your brother being stuck in another dimension
If you stick your head in a portal, you speak in code for a little bit before you turn into a hillbilly
Get your son to pay attention to you by creating a mech beast
We are all blanchin', unless we find a cool gun.
By the end of the show, the mayor's last name is "Cutebiker"
The president gives Dipper a negative 12 dollar bill
Bill Cipher
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