People with intellectual and developmental disabilities experience poorer health outcomes than the general population. As I wrote this month on SpecialSib, part of the reason is that the people providing their care often haven't been trained to do it well. That isn't only a frontline problem. It is a systems problem, and that is the… Continue reading Critical Issues in Health for People with IDD: What’s on My Desk This Month
The time has come. I always knew it would. Being raised a forever-giving, forever-guilty Catholic, I HAD to learn to be okay with saying this: I need to prioritize my family. I remember it like it was yesterday. More than eight years ago, I was standing in a dark parking lot after an advocacy meeting,… Continue reading The Natalie Project
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com From the outside, it probably looked like kindness. A man who doesn't speak is lying in a hospital bed. A nurse turns on the TV, finds a children's cartoon, and leaves it playing. Something gentle and bright to pass the time. My brother was fifty years old. When I… Continue reading He Was Fifty. She Put On Cartoons.
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com I met a person with IDD while working in behavioral health. They were in acute crisis stabilization — the kind of admission that's supposed to be short, contained, focused on getting someone safe enough to leave. But this person was incredibly anxious about discharge. Not about being in crisis.… Continue reading Two Buckets, One Person: What Happens When Systems Don’t Fit
Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com I had to refill a prescription this week. One prescription. Here's what that took: a call to my mail-order pharmacy, who told me they'd outsourced the fill to another pharmacy. An online chat that couldn't help and told me to call. A phone call that got transferred four or five… Continue reading When “Just Call and Ask” Isn’t Simple At All
