[DanaC]

I don't think this is a case of Mari bitching about how bad she has it....I think she is extrapolating out from her own experience and her own interaction with others in similar situations to suggest that a great many Americans are needlessly suffering hardship.

Thanks for posting that. I finally have a solid hypothesis regarding the cause of your holier than thou personality.

I don't see a holier than thou personality, I see somebody who has been goaded by nasty comments into making a dig back. We're all human.

mari, when your SSDI did come through, how much did you get, lump sum? For some reason I'm thinking 23,000$ American;

I doubt that. I could be wrong, but from what Mari's said to me in the past about entitlement, it wasn't at that sort of level.

As for her being able to be productive, I think Mari's pretty much covered why she can't hold down the kind of job that utilises her skills many times in the past. Her symptoms are the kind that would severely hamper her ability to maintain employment at anything beyond a fairly basic level; though i hope that her recovery to date gives an indication of further recovery to the point she would be able to resume such work.

Just because she is able to come on here and make a long post, don't extrapolate out from that that her symptoms aren't real and serious. Mari and I have talked this stuff through quite a lot on pm, the stuff she is dealing with is difficult and manifests in a range of symptoms which get in the way of keeping a job, and also make it virtually impossible to do the sort of work she is trained to do.

I am stunned at the lack of compassion being shown to someone who has had their career wrenched away from them and their life almost destroyed by an accident which has caused such severe neurological damage. That she can see this situation in terms not just of how it affects her, but how it relates to the plight of unemployed, severely disabled Americans generally, is testament to her strength of mind. That you see it just in terms of her whining is testament to your blinkered views on life.

Wolf, I expect that lack of compassion from, but Bri, I am surprised by.