I talked with the dietician again and I told her I was going on Meals on Wheels full time, but that my grocery budget would only allow me to get one meal a day

She said "You can't live off of one meal a day." She wants me to get more food.

I would like to know what planet this woman comes from that she thinks I can get more food so easily. Even if I were to add only $40 dollars to my food budget per month. That would only get me a box of cereal and 2 litres of milk every week and that's exactly how long both would last me, a week.

I live on $930 a month. That must cover all of my expenses. And I don't get a free ride just because I am in a wheelchair. Far from it. I must pay for additional expenses, like medication. A phone is mandatory, because my bus must be booked 24 hours in advance. Those bus tickets cost the same for me as they do for everyone else.

Some of you may be casting a jaundiced eye on this message and thinking of my computer. It is a mere $200 clunker, purchased with tax refund money one April. If it broke down, I would have a real crisis replacing it, because it would take me at least two to three months to raise the funds to do so.

Besides, this computer is my only contact with the outside world. I don't talk to people at my church easily, ^%^$ at all!! The only way I can communicate with Doug is through e-mail and he's my life preserver right about now. I also need it to write.

I do not have the money to go to museums or to go out for coffee with friends. If I want to buy a CD or a video game, I must make a choice between the two. I do not have a lot of books and I used to be an avid reader. I do not have a subscription to a newspaper. If I want clothes or a bus pass, something has to be sacrificed. Usually, the sacrifice hurts deeply.

Part of the reason why I do not go out is because I am continually lacking in funds. It is deeply embarrassing to have people continually to pick up the tab for meals.

There are social outings for the handicapped at the recreation centre, but even these demand an obscene amount of money up front. $50 for 3 months once a week, and bus fare may or may not be included.

I am a human being, not a prisoner in a Third World prison. That is exactly what you become when you live on a government cheque month after month. I can not even afford train fare to see my family. When I die, the government will pay to bury me.

If someone tells me to be grateful, I'll scream. Be grateful or what? They'll throw me out on to the street or into a nursing home? They'll euthanize me? That happens to my colleagues more often than I want to know.

All these things I don't have are because I don't have enough money and I have very little hope of finding employment with the way things are, no hope with the pain like this.

And Ms. Dietician wants me to find more money for more food. She says it would be nice to see me having some fruit or some juice. She says I can't live on one meal a day.

Yes, it would be nice, but it's a pipe dream. If I can't live on one meal a day then what am I doing here,typing this message? If you're so smart, Ms Dietician, figure that one out! And I've been living on worse meals than what M.O.W would be dealing out. Beans and rice. Pasta mixed with canned corn and tomatoes. Frozen burritos. None of this three meals a day, pie in the sky nonsense you've been harping about.

You can live on three meals a day on an ODSP cheque, but you would go insane fairly quickly. Your meals would be all you had to look forward to. I would not be with you on-line. I would not have the cats. I would not have the video games. No bus pass. No clothes. (Bear in mind that any physical activity for me for recreational purposes is out of the question....unless I wanted broken bones.)

The scary part is I'm one of the lucky ones. Many people cannot even find a place to live on the paltry sum the government pays them and ODSP is a disabillity cheque for people whose disability would affect their chances of finding work. Everyone who is capable of working gets a much lower amount.

Because I looked for subsidized housing, I have that roof over my head and that one meal a day. I see many of my disabled colleagues begging in the streets because they don't have enough to live on. It brings disgrace on all of us. It tells people that's all we're good for: begging. I haven't stooped that low and I won't. I wouldn't even use a food bank for years. I still have my pride. It's stupid, I know. But I don't want anyone giving me things when I could be working. I have a good mind and two working hands. I don't see myself as disabled enough to be permanently kept from the workforce, even with my pain.

I feel a lot of guilt over my not working. It took a desperate situation for me to even accept help from M.O.W. When an old woman berated a panhandler begging for money in front of the church, saying she had worked all her life, I felt it was a direct shot at me.

I should have taken this help years earlier. Because cooking was such a burden for me. But I told myself it was laziness, not depression and not my disability. I thought I should have been able to handle it.

Father Lindsay is happy that I'll be getting the help I need. I'm not sure about Doug. But for me, it feels like a step down, like falling off a cliff.

I wish I could work, but that just isn't possible.

Sorry to rant on like this, but that dietician made me feel like a rank incompetant for not living on three meals a day. And where am I going to get money for something to drink now that my grocery money will be gone paying for this? More sacrifices???

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.