Top that Woe

So my friend read my latest blog post, then turned to the Sunday paper and put 2 and 2 together...

Columbus Dispatch Commentary:
Pain is pain, and people have to cope in their own way
Sunday, February 14, 2010
By Deborah Kendrick

When my friend Christine was driving her sister to radiation treatments three times a week, she spent a lot of time waiting in a room with others experiencing serious illness either first- or second-hand. Week after week, she told me, there was a sort of game that was played out by some in the room, no matter who the current "waiters" happened to be.

"Top that woe," Christine called it, and I recognized it as an exchange we all sometimes fall prey to pursuing.

You know how it goes. One person has a tale to tell of an unsuspected skin cancer, so someone else tops that woe with a tale of breast cancer, and yet another tops that one with the horrible runaway train of disease.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who minimize personal disaster, seeing their own difficulties or suffering as always smaller somehow than someone else's.

Human nature is a funny thing. One parent finds a child's broken arm to be a calamity, while another deals almost routinely with frequent hospitalization for a fragile medical condition.

Dealing with disabilities is like that, too. One person breezes through quadriplegia -- "What? I broke my neck? Well, let's see, I'll have to figure out some new ways to get in and out of my house" -- while another is immobilized by a diagnosis of lactose intolerance. If you think about it, you'll know I'm not exaggerating much. We have all encountered such extremes in the handling of pain within ourselves or others.

At our worst, there is sometimes a sort of unspoken hierarchy of need in cross-disability gatherings. "Oh, well," say the wheelchair users, "no sign language interpreters. That's not a problem. A real problem is not having an accessible bathroom on every floor of a large building." Or, "What? You actually need a ramp to get in?" say the diabetics. "That's not as troubling as needing to test your blood sugar levels several times a day."

The reverse is just as often true, of course. I have seen wheelchair users place their own needs for physical access entirely aside, while protesting the absence of braille meeting materials or real-time captioning for their coworkers who are blind or deaf. And many people with sensory or developmental disabilities have marched, literally or figuratively, alongside their mobility-impaired compatriots to demand more accessible housing or transportation.

Primarily, the issue is one of perception: Each of us perceives difficulty in a unique way. I recently read a quote from the mom of a medically fragile child that puts it all in perspective. "Pain is pain," she said.

For me, that clarifies much. Which is worse -- losing your hearing as a baby or as a college student? Which is worse -- to need a bone-marrow transplant or a kidney transplant? Which is worse -- a broken leg or an amputated one? Or, to look at it another way: Which is worse -- the terrorist attacks on September 11 or the bombing of Hiroshima?

It doesn't matter. Pain is pain. Each person needs to deal with it in his or her own way, and to try to top that woe when it is your woe is irrelevant.

What I do know is that whether the world sees it as large or small, incorporating personal disability or difficulty into the general fabric of our lives makes it easier to recognize and relish pleasure.

Deborah Kendrick is a Cincinnati writer and advocate for people with disabilities.

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