Thursday, November 6, 2014

Point Form Rants Because I Am Used Up


  • Aids to Daily Living gives me and Julius's OT a different story every time I talk to them.  Today, my assigned clerk told me she left a message for me saying Julius needed to be reassessed because she didn't know who she was talking to or what my issue was.  I asked if that was how things usually worked, calling people without knowing who they are talking to or what their issue is.  She then told me Julius had been cut off in June.  Then she said she transferred his vendor in July.  And she has no record of reassessment.  She emailed his OT yesterday and told her that Julius doesn't meet the criteria for the product he had previously been approved for.  More, this flurry of responses came after THREE months of leaving messages and not getting called back.
  • I went to my MLA's constituency office (that is, not the MLA I work for, but the one who, unfortunately, represents me) to ask for assistance in dealing with AADL because, well, the clerk can't keep a story straight and seems to be the reason Julius lost his funding.  I walked in to the constituency office and was immediately told no one could come in without an appointment; I was given a card and told I could call at 2pm to make an appointment (it was 11:15am at the time.)  I called and was told I could have an appointment to discuss my issue in the 2nd week of December.  I said I didn't need to discuss it, I just needed someone to contact the MLA Health Liaison to investigate the mishandling of my son's account/case.  This, I was told, required an appt and I could have one in the 2nd week of December.  
  • I do that exact job (among others) in the constituency office where I work.  I (and my colleagues) take walk-ins and deal with the issue asap, usually within an hour or two. If an appt is made, it is because a constituent has called for one, not because one is required, and it is within 24 hours.  My constituency office has a larger population than the constituency in which I live.

  • I have tried to book an electrician through Handyman Connection for weeks now.  They've cancelled twice and yesterday left me a voice mail proposing a visit on Saturday at 10am.  I didn't have time to respond yesterday (because we are busy helping people in that above mentioned constituency office in which I work) and this morning had a confirmation email for a 2pm appointment on Saturday.  I responded saying the number of errors/cancellations was adding up to no service, so I would look elsewhere.  The manager called asking me to reconsider because it was just human error and I should be more understanding.  4 times?! On my first attempt to use their service?!  I wasn't rude; I just said I was put off by it and would look elsewhere.  This call really irked me.

  • Last week I loaned an expensive piece of sensory equipment to a woman who thought she might like to buy it for her son (Julius doesn't use it, never has, it was like new-- very sad it was a failure for him but thought someone else could use it.)  She or someone in her house broke it, she had me pick it up as she refused to return it (the drive was too long?!) and then sent nasty emails for days about her family not being responsible for breaking it because her husband has Aspergers.  WTF?  Are you kidding me?!???

  • I had a dental appointment this morning.  I love my dentist but for some reason, while she had her hands in my mouth and I could not speak, she talked to me like I was a therapist at her utter despair about her son being diagnosed with autism.  Why do dentists talk to us when we cannot respond?  And why about something so personal (because she knows I have kids with autism-- but her employee, my dental assistant, does too...)?  And why so negative when she knows that is not at all how I view autism (because we've talked autism before with her hands in my mouth) and that I am insulted by the burden/tragedy/pity/Autism Speaks view of autism.

  • I have to attend a Remembrance Day ceremony tomorrow.  I am anti-war.  I am anti-Remembrance Day.  I am opposed to a day that commemorates dead soldiers but not dead civilians, not the people in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, not the interned Japanese-Canadians, not the Syrian civilians being bombed (sorry, Canada isn't bombing in Syria, they are contributing to the mission of securing our threatened freedom-- grrrr) and killed, not the Aboriginal people targeted by the government with smallpox, with residential schools, with and Indian Affairs Dept (racist name) that has enacted legislation to ensure Treaty status is extinct within 80 years.  No, Remembrance Day instead honours people who have signed up to kill.  When I was a child, it was the soldiers in the "never again" World Wars, now it's the soldiers in Afghanistan.  Maybe (MAYBE) if there was a National Statutory holiday marking the loss of victims of war and government genocide, those people who did not sign up for death camps, concentration camps, residential schools... then maybe I would be less horrified that we take a day to honour people whose job is to kill.  The glorification of war in this society sickens me.  When our country (and many other Western nations, the US, UK, much of Europe) solve their international problems with bombs, guns, and other violence, WHY are people surprised that people inside our countries respond to their own perceived injustices with violence?  It's sanctioned and condoned if the government does it; how can they think that doesn't send a message about how to respond to problems to their citizens?!?!!!

  • Julius is STILL having traumatic responses to his bus accident and subsequent time spent stranded on the bus but the bus company STILL refuses to release any information about what transpired.  I've engaged a lawyer who has sent THREE requests for information to the bus company and it's insurer and they haven't so much as acknowledged his letters.  My baby is hurting hard and they can't be bothered to provide information that could help me/his therapists help him.  I am so frustrated.

  • Alberta Health Services STILL has not responded to the complaint I submitted to Patient Relations in August regarding the Stollery ER's refusal (twice) to examine Julius, refusal to discuss sedatives to allow for examination, improper physical restraint despite my demand that they stop in the two unsuccessful attempts to examine him... four visits.  All hideous.

  • I am so distraught by the general state of the world.  Apathy of voters.  The hideous federal and provincial government.  Everything in this world that keeps failing my children.  The school system, the supposed support systems, family members...  

I am fed up.  And that is an entirely exhausted understatement.  There are a lot of swears in me today.

Post-Script:
This is the opening paragraph from CBC' article about Remembrance Day:

It began as a visceral response to the terrible death toll of the First World War, but for Canadians, Remembrance Day has evolved into a tribute to all military dead and a celebration of the Canadian Forces in general.

And that, the celebration of a group of people assembled for the purpose of problem solving through violence, is precisely what disgusts me. 

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