Imperfect Analogies

Several months back, I came to the conclusion that much of what I deal with, when it comes to Sam, are like gears. It took me a while to realize this and as it is, I’m not sure it’s a completely accurate analogy. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not - but it was like a revelation and it feels closer to the reality of things than how I looked at it in the past.

Back when I was dealing with only the school and the IEP - and trying to line up services, it felt a lot like I was shoveling coal into one of those old steam locomotives. Where we were heading wasn’t always clear. But we were moving forward, so the goal became, keep shoveling the coal into the engine - keep it moving, keep it going forward - and we’ll figure out the destination once we get closer.

At some point, it began to feel a little less like keeping a locomotive running and more like I was one of those guys on some old variety show who would come out and spin three or four plates on top of what looked like three or four pool cues.

Keep the plates spinning, that's the goal - the IEP plate, the DDS plate and especially, the SSI plate. Just keep them spinning. Otherwise, they'll fall. One’s slowing down? Get over to it and get it going faster so it doesn’t drop. Another is slowing down? Get over to that one … and on and on and on.

I have "Sam" binder that I keep the important Sam information in. And several months ago, as I was filing some forms into it, I had a realization.

This binder is divided into sections. It has a section for school related paperwork, including Sam’s IEPs, it has another section for the DDS, a section for the MRC, a section for each of the two direct support agencies which currently support Sam’s employment and independence efforts, a section for the most important parts of Sam’s medical information, a section for some legal stuff, such as his Health Care Proxy and the Power of Attorney - and the largest section of all, SSI (which will soon have to be displaced into its own binder).

Also in this binder is more incidental information - things like business cards, a rough medical timeline (to the best of my recollection) which includes multiple physician’s names, their contact information and the approximate relevant years they treated Sam. There’s paperwork for the ADA bus application and paperwork for one or two other support agencies (neither of which I deal with as frequently as the other two). There’s paperwork from and for workshops and seminars that I’ve either attended or that I plan to attend.

All of the information is filed as neatly as I can manage, between dividers and in separate sleeves within this binder. But the reality is, while much of this information stands alone (like those spinning plates), that's only part of it. It's also about how entwined all this is.

I think this is less like spinning plates and more like dealing with gears - finding them, getting them in the right place and maintaining them. If one spinning plate stops spinning, then one plate falls. But when one gear fails or is missing, everything will stop.

In the end, none of this matters at all, of course. It is what it is - no matter what label you put to it. It's just that it's become more and more clear to me how reliant all of these seemingly disparate pieces are on each other.