Michele Gyselinck

 Nice, although saying that David's adultery puts his disability on the same level as someone who uses a wheelchair to get around trivializes genuine disabilities.  I'm not aware that David's adultery prevented him from using a sword or walking, or even caused him to experience hallucinations for that matter.  if this congregation needed to be told about David's adultery, either they aren't even at Disability 101 yet, or the pastor needs to read my blog about chronically normal people.

  That's nice, but in the wrong country, and at my age (57 and six weeks away from 58) who's going to hire me when I can't even commit to getting up at the same hour every day?

 At 89, my mom says she's pretty much lost the senses or smell and taste, so I have to make food more spicy for her to notice.  Not a big problem since we're used to eating our food spicier than average.  But on the whole she doesn't complain because a friend of hers since university is blind, has Diabetes type 2, Parkinson's Disease and almost constant pain.  Unfortunately for my mom's friend her daughter and granddaughters who live with her constantly move stuff around without telling her, so she can't find what she needs, and it has happened that the poor woman ACTUALLY brushed her teeth with Preparation H! They don't mean to but I have seldom met more thoughtless people in my 57 years of life.  Now the eldest son of this lady has told his sister that she needs to find herself a place to live, and she's panicking because she and her daughters have lived in her mother's house for 20-odd years without contributing a penny to pay the Hydro bills, the phone, or other utilities except a bit of groceries once in a while.  In short they've been freeloading on her, and now they're upset because the eldest man in the family called a halt to the free lunches.  The husband oof my mom's friend could see, and so could she before she developed macular degeneration, but he passed away in 2005, and she was already too blind to live alone, so her daughter moved in with her daughters who were little kids at the time, and who are now young women, the youngest at 21 is studying Pharmacology at the University of Montreal. This woman is well off financially, but my mom often says that despite their difference in material wealth she would not trade places with her friend for all the gold in the world.  Can you imagine being so handicapped and having two of your kids PLUS THEIR kids mooching off you for that long? They're not even helpful! The daughter does cooking on the weekend but she puts it in containers without identifying the contents in any way, so when my mom's friend opened the fridge door all she could see--if we can call that seeing--were lids, so she'd give up, close the refrigerator and eat a banana.  So this man is fortunate that at least his family isn't being a nuisance on top of having to live with restrictions caused by his blindness.  My mom's friend is a practicing Catholic, but not the rest of her family.  Not that there are any guarantees of finding consideration or thoughtfulness in all Christian families, but that's another story.

 At a time when, especially south of the border, some people put feelings and myths ahead of facts, this text is an important reminder that feelings and impressions ARE NOT facts ans should not be put on the same footing.  Feelings are transient : sometimes they're up, sometimes down, and you can't rely on them to direct your path in life.  As Reformed Christians we believe and have been taught that it is better to rely on what we know about God's character and what He did for us than on how we feel at any given moment.  We should extend that to dispelling myths about people with disabilities.

 A psychiatrist who studied neurology extensively and who lectures about the brain and how various conditions affect it said in one of those lectures that patients who have a stroke in the left hemisphere, which controls the right side of their body, have a better chance of recovery than the other way around even if speech is affected.  I won't go into details here, but if you look up on Youtube lectures by Dr. Iain McGilchrist, you can probably come across the one in which he spoke those words.      

 About 10 years ago I was on a certain anti-psychotic, and my psychiatrist at the time felt we should switch to another one from the latest generation because the side effects would be less severe.  However, because I still had psychotic symptoms at the time he recommended we start me taking the new one before phasing out the old, so for about three weeks I was taking the full dose of the old PLUS 100 mg of the new the first week then 200 mg the second week etc.... That made me feel very sluggish, and I imagine it slurred my speech a fair bit too because at about the same time I had joined a writing workshop where the assignment was to write a novel, and one of the ladies in the group assumed I was drunk.  Until the following week when I read the chapter I'd written in which my main character was going through exactly the same experience I was going through, and then she learned that it was not drunkenness that affected my speech but the medication I was taking to treat my mental illness, schizophrenia.  At it happened, this woman has a daughter who suffers from Bipolar disorder, so she readily understood that I needed to take my medication and we became friends.  I write you this to tell you that although people may make assumptions at first, when you explain the problem most people will understand.  And don't be discouraged.  Recovery may be slow, but with persistence your condition should improve.  A man in our congregation also had a stroke, and now whatever remains of it is barely noticeable to outsiders.  I asked about it some months ago, and his wife said he was back to normal.  I won't promise you that though.  I'm not a doctor, and I don't know you. 

 That is a very sweet story.

 Mark, Do you know if there is any equivalent program in Canada?  I can't say for Québec because the provincial government has been cutting services beyond the fat, and many parents and teachers complain that they are overwhelmed because they have too many kids with learning disabilities in their classes and not enough help to manage them.

 Mark, 

Did you include me in the list of speakers?

 Mental illness is less stigmatized than it used to be, but in some areas they are still the lepers of our age.  And yet, mental illnesses are NOT contagious.  You can't catch one by touching someone who suffers from a mental illness, regardless of which illness it happens to be.