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Saturday, November 5, 2011

Crippled in the Eyes of the State

Every year around this time, the state of Illinois sends someone to my home to make sure I’m still crippled. The state pays the wages of the guys I hire to get me out of bed, put me on the crapper etc., so the state needs to know that I’m still crippled.

So the cripple inspector asks me a bunch of routine questions and I sign a bunch of papers and for another year I am deemed to be officially crippled in the eyes of the state. There is of course a much simpler test the inspectors could administer to determine if I’m still crippled and it saves a lot of time and money. They could just take my pulse. If I’m still alive, I’m still crippled. And the state can rest assured that if something ever happens to suddenly render me not crippled anyone, they will for sure hear about it. There’s no way in hell that if one day I wake up not crippled I’ll hush it all up and sit around the house pretending to still be crippled. I’ll cash in big time right away on my new uncrippled status. It’s a fucking goldmine. I’ll get an agent to book me on a world tour as the guy who spent more than 50 years crippled but now all of a sudden isn’t. I’ll land a zillion-dollar book deal!

The last time the inspector came, she snuck in a question that took me by surprise. She asked me to spell the word “world” backward. I hesitated because she came out of the blue with that one. But then I spelled world backward. She wrote something down and she moved on to the next question. But I couldn’t leave it at that. After I signed all the papers, I asked her why she asked me to spell world backward. She shrugged. She said it’s just something someone somewhere added to the requirements for meeting the burden of proof that we’re still crippled.

I must’ve passed the test because I haven’t received a letter from the state informing me that I’m not crippled. But I still couldn’t leave it at that. There was something deeply sinister about the innocence of that question. It seemed like a trap, like those Rorschach blots. They look like a butterfly or a clown, but they’re so intimidating because you feel like if you interpret them wrong and say the wrong thing, it will give the shrink an excuse to lock you up.

So why really was the state requiring me to spell world backward? Needing a source of infallible, irrefutable information, I turned to the Internet. I learned that spelling world backward is a cognitive function test. It allows the examiner to tap into your cortex, which is the area largely responsible for higher brain functions, such as reasoning, sensations and memory.

I felt violated. Why was the state snooping around in my cortex? That seems like the kind of thing a state ought not to be allowed to do without a warrant. It creeped me out to think that the state could now be privy to all my sensations. And what about my memories? Did they discover any of the stuff in my past that I’m not proud of and I don’t want anybody to know about, such as the time I got my mom’s French poodle stoned? My mom went away and I had a party and one of the stoners who came over said you can get a dog stoned by blowing smoke in its ear. I should have known better than to tell a stoner they’re full of shit when they claim something like that, because you know damn well they’ll try to prove it. So he lifted the poodle’s ear and blew smoke. And the dog got a paranoid look on its face and it wouldn’t leave my side. And then it slept for about 12 hours.

And what do the inspectors do with all they gather from having me spell world backward? I picture them all drunk on eggnog at the Department of Human Service office Christmas party, entertaining everyone with tales of the sick and twisted shit they discovered while ransacking my cortex.

Next time the inspector comes around, I might just refuse to spell world backward. I’ll slam the door to my cortex! But they might use that as an excuse to say I’m not crippled anymore and cut me off. And then I’d be screwed. This is the kind of stuff you have to submit to when you need someone to put you on the crapper.

15 comments:

  1. Wow, that does seem like an utter bizarre waste of resources to have to keep proving you are crippled. I can understand one time, but annually?

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  2. Spelling the word "WORLD" backwards is usually part of a mental status examination. It helps test concentration and the ability to stay on task - it's easier than performing serial 7s (subtract 7 from 100 and do that 5 times). I usually perform it to assess my dementia patients; I have no idea why the inspector asked you to do it.

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  3. Somebody probably saw it on House and figured 'hey, why not add it to the questionnaire?'

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  4. I suspect that the city applies a different cost line to people with impaired cognitive function as opposed to those with physical disabilities. Or perhaps they are being proactive and assessing cognitive function in case people with physical disabilities develop some kind of dementia and are unable to advocate on their own behalf? But I suspect it's the former. (There's usually money behind these things.)

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  5. I don't want anyone rifling through my cortex either! Hell, even I don't want to look in there.

    This review seems costly and pointless and and could easily be adequately serviced on a five year cycle (assuming your condition is/has been fixed)... Do we wonder why government agencies struggle with budgets? If we could remove the stupid things they do there would be so much more money to spend actually helping people.

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  6. who grows up and wants to be an official state "cripple inspector"? I can't imagine the job satisfaction on that is especially good, although maybe you get to meet some awesome people.

    I can't help feeling that those cripple inspectors would be put to better use checking on all those kids who will be beaten and/or killed by Mom's New Boyfriend before too long.

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  7. kittens not kids said what I wanted to, only much better than I could have.

    But now I need to know how to shut my cortex...*deirrow*

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  8. I too have to have a cripple assessment done, however mine is done every 5 years... the first time they made me take this horrific and long 'mental' test to determine my 'status'....I spent the whole time trying to impress upon the examiner that today might be a good day and I might be all here and tomorrow might be shitzola. They wrote down I was 'probably' exaggerating...had a new test, new doc saw the truth, diff day, same brain, but diff cells working.
    Anyway, 5 years later I get out of the blue "its time to see if your still mentally crippled" letter. Very dehumanizing affair, have to go in and justify my existence again...but I learned from my mistake, this time I spent the entire 2 hours trying to convince the state that I was perfectly fine....6 days later(incredibly fast in government time) I got a letter stating, ya...your still apeshit crazy....see you in 5 years.
    My blind cousin has to go in as well every 5 years, and he goes...yup, I'm still F*ing blind dumbass government, he's got some other issues too...but the being blind, I can't figure out why they won't just figure that one isn't going to just spontaneously get better.

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  9. "Illinois Out Of My Cortex!" It has almost as nice a ring as "U.S. Out Of My Uterus!" Of course, it would sound better if you lived in Connecticut. But, for both of our sakes, I'm glad you don't live in Connecticut.

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  10. Maybe "Cook County Out Of My Cortex!"

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  11. During my Mental Evaluation for SSDI the doctor asked me some math questions. If I get them right does that mean I am sane and do not get my disability?

    Pondering over here too.

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  12. These annual evaluations aren't just to determine if you're still crippled, they're also used to determine whether they can cut your hours or toss you into a nursing home if you step out of line. In my state, in addition to the already intrusive and unpleasant questions, they recently added questions about bathroom habits that no able-bodied person would ever put up with. I asked the nurse why they were getting so specific, and she told me it was so they could "get people on a schedule" and consolidate their bathroom visits. I was horrified at this attempt at micromanagement by the government, and told her, "Write this down. I'll go to the bathroom whenever and however I feel like it!"

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  13. I helped my sister fill out her are-you-still-disabled paperwork once (she has difficulty concentrating, plus paranoia and a tremor which makes it hard to write on top of her other diagnoses)... we got super silly & slap-happy. Hers is for mental health issues, and one of the questions--no kidding--was "why are you filling out this paperwork?" And I half-jokingly said to my sister, "We should put 'Because the voices in my head told me to.'" Completely ridiculous.

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