Disabled, or Handicapped? What’s the Difference?

One of my medical school guest professors, let’s call him Dr. X, came to class in a wheelchair.  He had not used it all of his life.  In fact, he had only begun to use it in the past couple of years.

Dr. X was a normally functioning medical student with a wife and two children when one day he woke up, got out of bed, and fell on the floor.  His right side was completely paralyzed.  He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance; tests were done; and he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

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I Am Disabled

This post is a skosh more personal than what I usually write on Canvas – to understate things.  It’s a continuation of a post I started on my personal blog, called Charting The Course To See Where I Fell Off The Map, which might be of interest to some of you.  For those of you who prefer not to wade through the muck in my mind, the short version follows.

I have been in an extremely severe mixed bipolar episode.  If you want to know any of the finer points of that, you  will have to read through the post It Was The Worst Of Times, It Was The Worst Of Times.  There is no way to distill it here.