DISGUSTING:READ

as a person with a disability myself, this really makes me angry. I hope she gets put in prison for life.


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People don't realize how devastating it is for parents when a child is severely disabled. Like everyone else they had hopes and dreams for what their child would be, only to find that they are very far from even being normal. When the child survives, there is ongoing grieving for the parents, as the child continually fails to achieve the normal milestones of childhood and life. The majority of couples with disabled children don't remain together, although usually it's the father who has the hardest time accepting a less-than-perfect child. In the case described above, I bet the situation would have been quite different if the child had been a boy. It would have been a lot harder for the father to "dote" on a defective son.

In addition, it is a huge, thankless, and doomed-to-defeat job to care for a child that is that badly off, and it means no normal life or career for the parent with the biggest share of the burden. Strangers even assume there is something wrong with the parents, for example that they are "retarded" or that it is somehow the parents' fault that the child is handicapped. Also, "the system" supposedly helps the disabled and their families, but it's a lot like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip -- bureaucracies really suck.

Currently the economy has gone south in the U.S., and I just saw part of a program on PBS called "Need to Know," which described the plight of disabled children and adults being denied services. Although the states are legally required to give underage handicapped children "appropriate" schooling, one facility was being closed due to losing the 85 percent of their population that relied on Medicaid waivers to cover the 40K-plus cost of yearly schooling. The parents were given a list of other resources to turn to, a list that included such useful institutions as the local emergency room, a food bank, and a homeless shelter. Parents who called the state agency in charge of the school funding were even given the suggestion that they could drop off their child at a homeless shelter. Of course, the head honcho completely denied that such advice was given when asked about it by the TV reporters, and added that his staff would be instructed not to say anything so inappropriate in the future.

In California, a state bigger and richer than some countries, the rich, big, strong, handsome, talented, famous "Governator" raided the incomes of disabled people three times to help balance the budget and then attacked the program that provides in-home support services, which is cheaper than institutional care, by the way. No mention was made of the fact that California is the only state of the 22 that have oil extraction that does not have an oil extraction fee. Guess the oil companies are too hard up to tap... Now the Governator has moved on to making gobs of money from movies again, but I'll never pay to see another of his films or buy a DVD.

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