What's The Matter With Me? Podcast

I have multiple sclerosis, trigeminal neuralgia and I made this podcast to share what I’m going through.

Season 2, Episode 8: The Disability Trap

WTMWM? – S2, E8: The Disability Trap

Welcome to the Whats The Matter With Me? Podcast Season 2, Episode 8: The Disability Trap

My name is John, I’m 39 years old, husband and father of two, small business owner, radio DJ, podcaster and I have multiple sclerosis (MS), so I made this podcast to share what I’m going through.

The Whats The Matter With Me? Podcast is an MS podcast and it’s also about other things. I’m not a medical professional and you should not take this for medical advice. If you need medical advice, ask your healthcare provider.

Find us on Facebook and please rate us. Download the Whats The Matter With Me? Podcast from Apple podcasts and Whatsthematterwithme.org

Episode 7 Recap

Last episode, I took MS medicine by infusion and it knocked me out and burned me up, complained about reddit, new brace, I can zip up my own fly, for now.

Shoutouts

Shout out to Patrick– it turns out he found out about this podcast from the time I posted it on Reddit so in fact even though I thought it was disappointing, I got through to people even though I didn’t see it at first. Patrick is a young father with MS like me. He told me that he was inspired by What’s the Matter With Me? and started his own Ms blog on Facebook called Taking It Day By Day- Patrick’s MS Story. Check it out and many thanks and shout outs to Patrick.

I’m just going to keep it rollin’ with the shout outs so shoutouts to Rocky. I know she listens because she responds to the episodes in text messages. She is a librarian and she is trying to get the American Library Association to divest from fossil fuels. She has started to reach out to divestment experts to help amplify her argument from an environmental as well as a financial viewpoint. It’s very persuasive and I will put a link to it in the post on this episode on whatsthematterwithme.org. Shoutouts and thanks for listening Rocky. Click here to listen to her interview.

The Disability Trap

I watched an interesting short film called The Disability Trap by Jason DaSilva, the director of When I Walk, probably the foremost disabled filmmaker. He wrote an op ed in New York Times and as part of it included The Disability Trap, which raised some important questions. Before I get to that I noticed that the movie is about 13 minutes long, I think MS people make stuff that is about 13 minutes long and that’s about right I guess. That’s how I do it too. The film tells how in some states like New York, where Jason lives, the state provides one-on-one in-home care, so he live at home, be more independent and studies show he will have a longer life expectancy. His son lives in Texas, and in order for Jason to move there he will have to live in a home and he will lose a considerable amount of Independence and freedom. The point of his op-ed is that this creates an impossible choice whereby in order to gain proximity to his son he must relinquish his life as he knows it. It’s from the New York Times June 24th edition, called The Disability Trap by Jason DaSilva.

John’s Birthday / Swimming

It is so important tor me to be present as a father to my son, and I can’t imagine what Jason is going through. It’s John John’s 5th birthday tomorrow and we are going to go to Santa Rosa to be with my parents. We will all go swimming in the pool. I might try and get into the pool it’s kind of hard and I stubbed my toes a lot but I think I will try. I hope it is not too dangerous. Maybe I will try getting in on the deep end. I hope I can still swim.

Hoppin Hot Sauce Movie

I made the Hoppin Hot Sauce movie where I spoke about how I have MS but I didn’t let it stop me from cooking. I put it on my Youtube channel, and my customer email, where this month it was the top item. I was nervous about it, but the response has been uniformly positive. The gears are spinning and I am working on a few more videos already. Hoppin Hot Sauce is good sauce and social entrepreneurship and I think there’s something very positive about that. I’m going to keep working at it.

Tomato Salad

I’m starting to get tomatoes off the tomato plants and their are pretty ugly but they are delicious. I hope we get a lot more. We put them in salad with oil and vinegar, basil and salt.


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