This is my dad, 14 years after coil embolization to repair a brain aneurysm, a stroke resulting from a clot breaking free after the surgery and further complicated by hydrocephalus and an infection in his brain stem when he was 41 years old. As you can see, a substantial portion of his brain is dead. He has left side hemiparesis and initially had massive problems with short term memory loss, swallowing, cognitive function, lack of inhibition, etc during the first year. Today, he's almost normal, though he sometimes gets a little forgetful and he needs help walking (he never regained much of his left hand). Most of the damage was done because it took 2.5 months to get him stabilized enough to go to rehab. After the surgery for the infection in his brain stem, he was in a coma and on a ventilator. I was told that he had 3 days to come out of it or he probably wasn't going to... and, respecting his wish to never be left to live on machines, I had made the decision of when I was going to pull the plug (I was going to wait a week so he didn't accidentally hang on and die on my sister's birthday).

The younger the brain, the more plasticity it has and the more capable of recovering from severe brain damage it is. You might not be the exact same as you are now, but my dad certainly has a decent quality of life today. "He" is definitely still very much there, though sometimes he gets frustrated because he can't do everything he used to do, particularly in way he used to do it. He hates that he's dependent on others... but he finds plenty of enjoyment in life, looks forward to the time he gets to spend with his grandkids, etc. After years of resistance and despite being a grade school dropout, he's finally decided he wants to start learning about computers and stuff.

Massive brain damage isn't the end of the world, though it can certainly be difficult. I understand that it's quite scary to think about and a lot of people would rather be dead than face those challenges. That said, the younger you are, depending on just how severe the brain damage is, you can still have a positive life afterward and you still can even be you. Not every case is an absolute case of permanent vegetative state or "losing the soul."

On the flip side, there's a restaurant that I go to that has one male and one female bathroom. I've never been in the female one, but the male one is so small that, as an able-bodied person, _I_ can barely get in there. To get my dad in, I need to park his wheelchair out in front of the short, narrow hallway that leads to them, shimmy him down the hall, turn the knob on the door (ball handle, not a bar), and somehow manage to pull him in, turn him around, pull down his pants and sit him on the toilet. If I had to guess, I'd say the bathroom is about 4 feet by 4 feet (you can reach the opposite wall and the door to the left from the toilet).

Another restaurant that I used to manage was built in the 70s in a building that was originally designed to be a house. The bathrooms were about the same size but they were much "easier" to get to since the hallway wasn't as wide. In fact, there was no hallway, you had to go outside to get to the bathrooms. Fortunately, I convinced the owners that they needed to do something about that. The solution was to just make a single large handicap bathroom for each gender and as an added bonus, we added seating for another 40 people and an enclosed office and more dry storage in the basement.

Now, both buildings were grandfathered in since they were built before the ADA was passed... but that's part of why the ADA was passed. I'll also agree that the ADA goes too far in accommodation demands some respects.

As I said on the Steve Jobs story a couple months ago, the biggest thing for me isn't so much where the spots are located as the simple fact that I need to make sure I have room to get a wheelchair between my vehicle and the one on my passenger side so I can transfer my disabled father into it. Handicapped spots are either wider or have markings between them to provide that room. If you think it's a pain in the ass when you come back to your car to find that someone has parked so close you can't open the door, try doing that with someone in a wheelchair. Worse, try do it in a busy parking lot (my dad's been sideswiped in his chair before despite the fact that he was wearing a bright red jacket.)

As someone that frequently parks in handicapped spots, my area (Western NY*) seems to have an amazing lack of them. It's often difficult to find open spots at grocery stores, doctors offices, etc. A few times a month, I'll end up deliberately parking at the far side of the parking lot precisely so I'll have room for the wheelchair because the closer spots are all taken. I try not to be that dick that parks in a way that takes up two spaces, though every now and then in lots or fields without markings, I'm forced to do that too because of the desire for some drivers to park touching the mirror of the car next to them.

* At one point, I think is was the American Fact Finder part of the census that listed this general area with a ridiculous amount of something like 37% of the population being classified as disabled. Granted, that's not all physical disabilities, but it stuck with me because the number seems so absurd. When it eclipses 50%, does being disabled become the norm with the super-abled being classified as the different ones?

Fries and soft drinks... they're insanely profitable even with the free refills and if they're self-serve, there is almost no labor component to them.

I've been out of the restaurant management business for about 5 years, but things couldn't have changed that much. It costs about 3 cents for the cup and about 10 cents on average to fill it (various size cups, not every refill is a full cup, etc). People get their initial fill, most people get one refill, few people get more than one. So, if we just assume everyone gets 2 refills, it costs 23 cents for your beverage, which they sell to you for anywhere from $1.50-$4 depending on the restaurant. That gets you a ~500% profit margin.

Fries also have a good margin, though there is a higher labor component, the cost of cooking them, keeping them frozen, lowered yield (waste, broken fries, etc). In fact, most fryer side orders are pretty profitable (a half dozen mozzarella sticks might sell for around $5, but you can buy a 4.5 pound case for around $11, which will yield about 10 orders).

The sandwiches aren't nearly as profitable, particularly the meat sandwiches, but the sandwiches are what get people in the door. A 1/3rd pound burger costs around 75 cents for the meat, 20 cents for the bun, 15 cents for the cheese, and up to another 25 cents if it is dressed. They need to be refrigerated, you lose yield (overcooked, fell apart, etc) and are relatively labor intensive (especially if you patty them yourself). For that $1.40 investment (not counting labor, yield, etc), you sell it for about $3.

Factor in that somewhere around a third of all of your revenue goes to labor and another 30-40% goes to food costs depending on your model. On top of that, you still have your overhead - mortgage/rent/property taxes, heating/cooling, gas/electric, etc. Profits are pretty thin in the fast food/diner/family restaurant market and without the profitability of the side orders, most of them can't stay in business for long (hell, most of these non-chain restaurants fail in the first year anyway). Upscale/fine dining is a whole different beast.

Yes, because if he gets an infection, I DON'T? take him to the doctor?!?!

I start the course of antibiotics (oral and topical, along with some compression and elevation to help with circulation) while we're waiting to see the podiatrist. He'll usually send out a culture to make sure the antibiotics are going to work on this particular infection, debride as necessary, and then see my dad for routine followup until the wound heals, which can take anywhere from weeks to months.

OR I can just go back to the first time, where the infection went out of control because I couldn't immediately begin treatment, which caused an ulcer that was around 25mm around, completely penetrating the skin down into the subcutaneous tissue and requiring 4 months of regular treatment to heal... great idea! Maybe next time my dad can have his foot amputated because, well, we wouldn't want a diabetic with a history of foot infections to have some antibiotics or he'll create an epidemic threatening the lives of, uh, yeah, all the people he doesn't come in contact with being stuck at home most of the time! His risk of necrosis without treatment is far higher than the risk that someone is going to contract a superbug because I started him on a course of antibiotics.

In all seriousness, there are times where it is a good idea to have antibiotics on hand, especially for particularly vulnerable patients, just like it's a good idea for someone with anaphylaxis to have an epi-pen handy. They should still go to a doctor to get checked out, but you want to start treatment as soon as possible to limit the damage. Believe it or not, but there are a lot of people that don't live within a few minutes of a doctor or hospital, especially out in rural areas, especially on weekends. That's not to say that everyone should keep courses of a half dozen antibiotics on hand for when they get the sniffles, but it does make sense for some people with chronic conditions.

Just to rule out the absolutes, my dad is a diabetic that is largely non-ambulatory due to left hemiparesis. He's had a problem with infections breaking on out his left foot. It happens once or twice a year, usually sometime during the winter when things are cooler, further reducing his circulation. It'll go from a small break in the skin to a full blown ulcer in a matter of 1-3 days from the initial outbreak. His podiatrist prescribes an extra course of cephalexin whenever he has an outbreak so that as soon as I see the infection starting, I can start treatment (including topical mupirocin, also prescribed) rather than have to take him to the emergency room or wait to see the podiatrist in the office, which could be bad if the breakout happens on a Friday afternoon.

The first time it happened, we ended up at the hospital where talk of amputation occurred after just three days... Almost a decade later, he's never had it get that bad again, he's never even had to be hospitalized for it again, precisely because I have the tools to treat it as soon as it starts. So yes, there are valid reasons for having extra antibiotics around. Does everyone need them? Definitely not. But if you're a vulnerable patient, it isn't a bad idea.

If the disabled person has no intention of leaving the vehicle, they shouldn't park in the space since the entire purpose is to facilitate the disabled person going to/from their vehicle and the building. Their able bodied passengers can walk from a regular parking space. When I have my dad with me and he's not going to be getting out of the vehicle, I park on the far side of the parking lot, where I park when I don't have him with me - I could use the walk and my vehicle is less likely to get damaged.

Speaking of handicapped toilets, I can't believe how UN-accessible many of them are for someone in a wheelchair, despite them being labeled as such. There are at least 3 places where we frequent (one being a doctor's office, another a phlebotomy lab and the third a restaurant) where I have to stand him up and walk him into the stall because there's just no room for a chair at all. The restaurant's handicap stall door is so narrow, we can barely get through it walking, much less even attempting to get a chair in there.

I guess I'm glad he's never had to fly...

Surprisingly enough, the absolute best public handicapped bathroom I've ever seen, is a bathroom at Hills Creek State Park (a campground in Pennsylvania). It was probably 30x15 feet, was completely open with a toilet, sink, soap, etc easily accessible and a bench shower in the corner as well, all meant for a single person. The floor was slightly sloped to drain any possible water and was textured enough to not be slippery even in bare feet for someone with a bad leg. We had full access to do everything we needed to take care of him without trying to be contortionists. That was about the last place I expected to find accommodations like that, even hospitals aren't that good.

Say I dropped my dad off at physical therapy... I'll pull into a handicapped spot, take him out of the truck, and wheel him into the building. He's in there for an hour, so maybe I go run a few errands and then come back to pick him up, again parking in a handicap space when I get back. In both incidents, I used the handicap space for unloading or loading a handicapped patient during that parking time - something that definitely isn't abuse. I almost never drop him curbside since he needs me to get wherever anyway (he's too dangerous with left-field neglect (doesn't see the left side of his field of vision) for a powered chair in public, though he has a scooter for around out yard). My complaint was having to park in the part of the parking lot you drive through to transfer him because the non-handicap spaces are too narrow for the wheelchair then having to leave him while I finish parking in a proper space.

One thing that DOES really irk the hell out of me... is when people park in a handicapped space an the handicapped person stays in the car while an able-bodied person runs into a store or whatever. THAT is abusing the sticker unless the disabled person is going to come into the store themselves at some point (maybe they were finishing eating because they have to be careful how they swallow, maybe they had to deal with a colostomy/incontinence issue or something, maybe they need to adjust their brace(s), etc).

I'm also not sure where all these open handicapped spots are that people complain about. It can often be difficult to find spots in the place where you need them the most - namely hospitals (40 or so total in a 6 floor parking garage at our main local hospital) and small doctors offices (3 at his primary care doctor, 2 at his podiatrist, etc). Even the Walmarts, malls, home improvement stores, etc here are often full. Then again, according to the census, 38% of the regional population is considered "disabled," which I just find to be insane (census currently provides an (X) but last time I checked and the data was available, it was 38 or 39, which I only remember because it floored me then).

My dad had a brain aneurysm and stroke, leaving his left side almost entirely paralyzed, and I'm his primary caretaker. You'll see my pickup (not a big work truck, but it could just as easily be - not everyone can afford multiple vehicles) parked in those handicapped spots. Frankly we need a few feet between cars to make room for his wheelchair even without a lift (I keep it in the bed of the truck and lift it in and out myself). We've been stuck in parking lots without handicap spaces, where I have to stop where people drive through, get him out of the truck, move him over to the side, pull into a tight parking space and then go fetch him, reversing the process to get back out. While doing that, he's also had one impatient person sideswipe him in his wheelchair because they just couldn't bear to wait the couple minutes that it takes to complete the process.

You may also see me parked in the handicapped space, get out of the truck all by myself and walk in somewhere. I never abuse the sticker, in that case, my dad is already inside and I parked there for when I bring him back out. Same thing if you see me walking to my truck by myself, chances are I was either dropping him off or I had to run back to my truck to get some paperwork we forgot or something.

My sister has brain problems too... looks perfectly normal but goes into seizures randomly throughout the day. She has a sticker because a parking lot is a dangerous place to fall and seize in (see my dad getting hit in the wheelchair). No, she can't drive. Don't be so quick to judge people when you don't know their circumstances. Yes, there are plenty of people that abuse them (and yes, they are very easy to get), but there are a lot of legitimate people that do need those spots even if you can't tell from watching them for the 30-60 seconds it takes for them to walk inside.

I had a professor that taught M68k assembly to first year computer engineering students... when class started, he had just gotten back from spending the summer term back in India and his accent was so thick, nobody in the class could really understand him. On top of that, he struggled for words to help students relate to basic processor fundamentals, not being able to think of the terms like "post office box" when talking about registers. Despite the supposed pre-reqs to even get accepted maybe 2 of us in that class of 35 or so even knew what binary numbers were, so when it came time to actually take what we learned in class and implement it in a lab setting, all but a couple of us were completely lost and the vast majority of them failed the lab and class.

I don't care if the guy was Indian or whatever, but he was being paid to teach the students, which he was clearly unable to do. Those of us that had some previous experience (I knew x86 assembly, so learning the m68k flavor was fairly trivial) managed to get by, but for most students, the money they spent on tuition for that class was an utter waste. Sure, you could argue that they should have leaned more heavily on the book and taught themselves, but despite the $100 the book cost, they still spent somewhere around $4k on the credit hours they dedicated to that professor's class. As for why I didn't help the others much, I was busy working full time to pay for college so I wouldn't come out with a ton of debt, so it's not like I could afford to dedicate all of my time to teaching people what he should have been.

My mom and her siblings were raped and abused by family friends and ultimately abandoned by both parents... some of them managed to repress the memories on their own (only for it to resurface in their late 20s/early 30s, where they eventually processed it and moved on as best as they could or turned into the next group) or they coped through alcoholism and drug abuse, where their entire life is dysfunctional as they try to avoid dealing with what happened to them as kids.

My sister is flat out evil and spent her entire life using people for her own gain, often fabricating lies, including 3 false rape charges against different guys, to get what she wanted.... a few months ago she started having psychogenic seizures caused by the stress of suddenly gaining a conscience and not being able to repress what she's done to people. Either she'll find a way to make peace with what she's done, possibly by trying to make amends to those she's hurt, or she'll probably spend the rest of her life constantly seizing because the guilt will linger if she can't be honest enough with herself to process and move on.

Lots of people have bad things happen to them... most will repress the lesser bad memories entirely though the more significant trauma only seems to be able to be repressed for a period of time. It's possible that you're overly conscious to criticism and thus those wounds stick out for you more than they would for a "normal" person. I'm certainly not minimizing what you're feeling as I remember all of the negative things that have happened in my life too, regardless of how minor or petty those sleights may have been.

Likewise, it's funny you mention the sensory overload of cities... I don't mind visiting cities, but I could never live there precisely because of the sensory overload. My brain picks up on and remembers every little detail and, on top of the anxiety issues I have, it really stresses me out between the visual, audio and odor overload. It doesn't dull my autobiographical memory at all, it's still fully functional recalling in another "thread" of my brain while I'm there and outside of the city, I still have a full "recording" to recall of my experiences later.

I was born in the city, lived there for my first 6 months, then moved out to a trailer park in the sticks, moving further out again when I was 7 ... I was a pretty active kid and my memory of those days is just as good as my teen and adult memories. I can remember full days of playing, riding bikes, taking apart a calculator, even daydreams I had from back before I even started school, like it just happened today. I occasionally get this sense of prescience, knowing that I will recall a particular experience I'm having in the moment at some point in the future and years or decades later when that memory resurfaces, I'll even remember thinking about that feeling of prescience in that moment, however mundane as the moment might have been. I frequently get a sense of deja vu, knowing I've seen something before or that though will be the first time, the exact same thing will happen to me again in the future (down to specifics, not just "I'm gonna buy groceries and check out at register 3." I even get the occasional recurrent dream (one of several) that I've had randomly for decades. Oddly, I very rarely dream, or at least very rarely remember them, which may have something to do with my memory processing overall.

As far as doing something more involved goes, playing action oriented FPS games probably does the most to dull my ability to immediately, involuntarily recall past memories, but it's probably only 50% effective overall and will trigger other detailed memories of playing games (by myself, with friends, whatever).

My dad had a brain aneurysm and stroke... the ultimate result of which was he basically lost the entire top half of the right side of his brain. Other than the most obvious effect that he's paralyzed on the left side of his body, it affects his short term memory in particular (his long term memory is mostly intact, but confabulation has corrupted some of it). Whereas I remember every minute detail, he'll often forget a wide array of things and constantly need to be reminded of both trivial and important things.

Being familiar with both ends of the spectrum, I'd say they both suck pretty bad in their own ways. I don't want to be on the other extreme anymore than where I am now, I'd settle for just being able to be normal.