Monthly Archives: April 2010

Thoughts on New York TBI Waiver

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One of the primary challenges faced by New York State’s Traumatic Brain Injury Waiver is a lack of understanding of the brain exhibited by the majority of those provider services to those of us who live with brain injury and by those saddled with designing and implementing the waiver in the first place. There are also those who provide services to those of us who live with brain injuries whose sole purpose is to keep us dependent on them so they can rake in the dough.

The waiver is a Medicaid program that began in 1995 that pays for services designed to keep people living in the community. It’s stated purpose is both honorable and needed. However, its design and implementation  has its problems. It is reasonable to expect this with  any relatively new program but the waiver is fifteen years old now and should be in better shape than it is. For example,  providers ought to receive reimbursement for staff training directly related to brain injury. Right now this kind of staff training puts an unfair strain on provider coiffures.

It must be acknowledged at the outset of this missive that there is much that is positive about the waiver, primarily the fact that its very existence afford some who live with brain injuries to live in the community as opposed to be warehoused in institutions. The problem though is that a number of those who provide services under the waiver make choices that appear to be more driven by the desire to keep someone on the waiver rather than help them reach their maximum level of independence. In other words, an unhealthy form or profit motive coupled, in some cases by the dysfunctional and cruel desire to control others, defeats the very purpose of the waiver in the first place, and in some specific cases, ought to result in criminal charges given that  indentured servitude (and slavery) is against the law.

It seems to me that the way to approach the challenge of improving the state’s waiver is to not come into the process pointing fingers. You come into the process steadfast and tenacious in your commitment to get the bow of the ship, so to speak, headed in the right direction. There are many on all fronts: advocacy, family, survivors, department of health officials, a providers who are committee to doing the right thing. They must be joined in their commitment to this. However, the must be equally joined in exposing any person, process, agency or official who is part of the problem.

Those who are part of the problem need to be exposed and dealt with.

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Taken For Granted

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What you have can be gone in a minute. This is a sentence I can place before you on the table and say, Look, it’s true. This doesn’t  mean you’ll fully get it nor does it mean you should be expected to. Nevertheless, Look, it’s true.

I don’t know if it’s my age, or simply enough days of sobriety under my belt, or perhaps reality just has a way of working its way into one’s mindset, but of late I am acutely aware of the fact nothing is forever, and so my appreciation for life, and all that is in it, is heightened and even more heartfelt than normal. Here in upstate New York for example we are in the first days of Spring. The lawns are richly verdant and buds are appearing on some trees and already opening on others. The early morning is filled with the audio jewels of birds singing and there are times my eyes tear up I am so swept up in happiness. Outside the window by my writing table a family of red squirrels feasts daily on the sunflower seeds I keep tossed across the lawn. I’ve named one Hal and another Henrietta and I frankly don’t care if I’ve got their genders right. There’s a little young one that joins them that I’ve named Henry.

There are times I lean back in my chair and watch them for I don’t know how long.  I am dazzled nearly to the point of giddiness by the delightful feathered curl of their tails as they devour one seed after another in their miniature paws.

My point in all this is that life can be and is beautiful. Don’t take it – or each other for that matter – for granted. If you are around someone who takes you for granted, perhaps you might want to disengage from them if in fact you’ve let them know how you feel. Know this; if anyone is taking you for granted they are doing so for reasons that are not your fault. In the process they failing to see the wonder that is you. You do not deserve to be overlooked by those in your life.

Anyway, enjoy your day, wherever you are. And thank you for reading this. You are not taken for granted by this writer. That, I promise you.

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Haley Barbour And A Racist, But I Repeat Myself

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Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said the initial failure to mention slavery  in Virginia Governor’s  Bob McDonnell’s Confederate History Month proclamation “doesn’t amount to diddly.”  If you can’t hear the sound of racism in that comment you are either a racist or so damned stupid you probably don’t understand what I’m saying here in the first place.

Barbour reminds this writer of the racist likes of a Lester Maddox. Nothing will change Barbour’s mindset, which is bad enough. What is really scary is that he is a leader of the Republican Party, a fact that would disappoint the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, both great presidents and both, by the way, Republicans.

In an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley, Barbour reacted to the assertion that some find the idea of celebrating the Confederacy offensive by pointing out that his state legislature is Democrat and they’ve regularly approved a day annually celebrating the Confederacy and so have former Democrat governors, as if these facts had anything to do with  the point at hand. If you are making people ride in the back of the bus or you are longing for the days when you could make people ride in the back of the bus, those of us who believe in equal rights don’t really care what political party you belong too.

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Responsibility, Accountability, Amends, Healing

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When I took my first stumbling steps toward sobriety I still pointed my finger at everyone and anything but me when it came to the troubles in my life. That’s not how it works, not if you’re interested in living a healthy life, a life where you are free to be you one day at a time.

If you hear  a hint of the cliché here, so do I. And it’s okay. Once, when I was a boy, I moaned to my father about something being a cliché. He smiled knowingly and said, “Well, Pete, there’s a reason they become clichés.”  True that.

Today I read in the New York Times that the Catholic Church is going to work on ways of regaining the faith of its followers. Apparently Rev. Federico Lombardi “said that the church should cooperate with civil justice systems in the handling of priests who molest children, as well as following its own law.”  Not enough. The only way to truly regain the healthy faith of anyone is to accept accountability for your actions and hold others accountable for theirs.  Were this to happen in the Catholic Church, people like Benedict and others should be fired and, if the statute of limitations have not run out, arrested and charged. There is no shortcut around reality and their is certainly no shortcut, legally, intellectually and morally around child rapists, pedophiles and those that aid and abet those who have committed or are committing these crimes.

You can’t, as they say in the rooms of a 12-step program I go to, play the cracks, meaning play the angles. You accept responsibility in part by holding yourself accountable, you make amends, and then the healing begins. Anything short of that, the bleeding continues – and the children suffer.

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What Then?

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When all is done

When quiet words sing

When  breath calms to still                 

What then?

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