When my mother first began feeling weak, I remember no one at first took her condition seriously. For the most part, we all took it as a normal aging process since she had just turned sixty-nine and was on medication for a high blood pressure diagnosis. She herself didn’t give it too much thought, I remember her dismissing some of her symptoms as “side effects of my medication.” While away from home, I would often speak to her on the phone, and would ask if her health was improving, but she would always reply yes, only adding that she was feeling “a little weak on my left side.” one day while at work this past summer, I received  a call from her telling me that she had a stroke, but that she was doing fine. When I finally got the chance to visit her, it was immediately obvious that her health was in serious decline despite all that she had told me. What made things even worse for us was the fact that her application for health insurance kept on getting rejected, without any coherent reason. I remember one time driving her to the social workers office with hopes of finally getting a clearer picture of what was wrong with her application, and why it was taking so long for it to be approved, only to return empty handed without any answers, but with instructions to keep in touch with them.

All this time her health remained in steady decline as we could not keep up with follow up appointments and other mounting bills. After waiting in vain for her application to be approved, and because she could no longer perform simple activities of daily living like cooking or cleaning, we decided as a family to move her in with my eldest sister. Because it was a different state, we decided to reapply with hopes of finally getting approved. Because she already had an application being processed, it was demanded that her file be sent over for a reevaluation. A quick review of her old application revealed one small discrepancy; apparently while completing the application she had mistakenly wrote down my father’s social security number instead of hers, and surprisingly, while she was being denied health insurance, no one had the patience of accurately checking her application before forwarding it for approval.

Evidently in not being prompt in their response and professional in their approach to her case, they had neglected their duties and failed to see the disabling effects of their actions on an individual whose advanced age and align health had severely impaired her ability to adequately complete the application process. Though subtle and usually done unconsciously, such oppressive and discriminative tendencies against the disabled especially those with limited mental capacity remains rampant partly because it has not been adequately defined and identified. In the “social model of disability”, Tom Shakespeare accurately identifies “the neglect of impairment as an important aspect of disabled people’s lives.” He furthers this notion by adding that “while other socio political account of disability have developed important insight that people with impairments are disabled by the society as well as by their bodies, the social model suggest that people are disabled by the society, not their bodies.” Though there is unanimous consensus among sociologist that there can never be a world devoid of such oppressive tendencies towards the disabled, until there is some alternate model which properly address this issue people like my mother are bound to remain oppressed by the society. Her ordeal accurately Exemplifies the psychological and physical torture millions of impaired individuals endure before they are fully acknowledged.

After identifying the discrepancy, my mother’s application was finally approved and she could finally get health coverage through Medicare. However, by his time, her health had gotten even worse, and her symptoms were more evident. After visiting with her new physician, her MRI revealed she had Encephalopathy, with early stage Parkinson’s disease. It does appear as though her lack of proper health insurance had landed her an inaccurate or incomplete health care, leading to a wrong diagnosis. When I visited her again in December, she had been prescribed new medications and her tremors were improving. Though she was still quite frail, she was gradually gaining some strength. As always, she blamed everything on the side effects of her medications, but at least I now know what she is going through, and can personally adjust so as not to be disabling in my approach towards helping her meet her daily needs.