Looking at the medical questions on the driver's license "renewal by mail" form, I wonder, how does a PWLD (Person/People with Lyme Disease) answer them when symptoms vary so much from day to day, month to month, year to year? (The form may vary from state to state.)
Must you have your LLMD (Lyme Literate Medical Doctor) sign something every year? What limitations has anyone has imposed? Does one have to list every medication for anything? It seems like, if that is so, few PWLD would be driving. Only we PWLD ourselves can judge if we are capable of driving on any given day. But walking with difficulty, if a PWLD was pulled over, staggering and maybe having to have a drug test -- I wonder if one would be in BIG trouble for driving at all.
What do you do? Keep a letter in your jockey box (glove compartment) from your LLMD asserting that you are under various treatment protocols but capable of judging if you can drive on any day and how far?
I'm in a bog with this problem. Help???
Non sequitur: Driver's License is now "driver license" -- at least in Utah. Have I always got that wrong? Posted by mlkeen (Member # 1260) on :
Hi cecy-
Many of us have had to limit our driving in varying amounts while we have been sick.
I have the sense that "we" monitor ourselves, not driving when we don't feel well, and don't get the state involved. They move so slowly to do or un-do anything.
The reality is that you don't know how long you might be limited so you would not want to have the state limit your driving should you be much better next week.
Posted by Andie333 (Member # 7370) on :
Technically, you're getting a license allowing the driver to operate a vehicle, hence the singular possessive: driver's license.
Good grammar is an antiquated idea.
Just my two cents as an often-wrong writer.
Andie
Posted by MADDOG (Member # 18) on :
Hi,I concluded that since the government doesen't except lyme as a dissability.
YOU DON'T have to tell them a darn thing.
Claim no problems at all!!!!
MADDOG
Posted by Lymetoo (Member # 743) on :
quote:Originally posted by Andie333: Technically, you're getting a license allowing the driver to operate a vehicle, hence the singular possessive: driver's license.
Good grammar is an antiquated idea.
This former teacher agrees! Using possessives is now a lost art!
Posted by rosesisland2000 (Member # 2001) on :
Wow, in Arkansas, we do not have to answer Medical Questions, cause they don't ask any...renewal by mail or otherwise. And, if you come in from another state, they just take away that state's license and issue on for Arkansas...
Just moved back here in recent years and that was the way for us.
Posted by cecy (Member # 8215) on :
mlkeen, you helped me a lot. (I'm a professional mom, too. Bravo!) I'm glad to know I'm not alone in monitoring myself. I am competent to judge when to drive or not, and how far. It's difficult when the government monitors us too much. I just wonder what medications would give one a DUI (Driving Under the Influence), especially if one hasn't reported every medication that says "Caution: may cause drowsiness." One could, I suppose, argue that "may" is not "will." And who's NOT drowsy at some point while driving. Think of all the tired truck drivers, or college kids.
From observation, I feel we're safer drivers than almost anyone using driving "under the influence of a cell phone," provided, of course, we're not on a cell phone either. I've seen drivers who weave like they're drunk, and sure enough, get up beside them and they're on a cell phone! Having driven with a car full of sometimes noisy kids, I'd say cell phones are far more distracting. The license form doesn't ask "do you drive kids," "do you use a cell phone will driving," "do listen to loud radio," etc. What can the "driver license" people can be thinking!
Andie, thanks. I'm an "often-wrong writer" too, as you probably know by now. I hold to a lot of so-called antiquated ideas. Most are good ones. Like grammar. (You're funny; always giving a smile.) I'll keep calling it a driver's license and be a die-hard.
Lymetoo, I didn't realize how lost an art the use of possessives is. No wonder I've been a little confused. It's strange that 200 years ago spelling wasn't systematized, and it's taken us this long just to slide back down to that level. "If you can't rise to one level you fall to another," I always say. Unless "driver license" is a typo, it's a ludicrous spelling/title: Can you imagine an officer asking you "May I see your driver license?" That's called leaving the possessive out altogether! (Say it to yourself; doesn't it sound odd, kind of like "drive-a-license"?)
Rosemary, I think I'll move to Arkansas! Glad to know it's a little easier in that respect for you. (I pray for our troops; I hope I would even if I didn't have relatives in Iraq.) The site you suggested looks good; have book-marked it.
MADDOG, thanks. I think you're half serious, half funny. Oh, the irony of it! QUESTION about the difference between "disability" and "debilitating disease": Do you, or anyone, know if the government calls Lyme a debilitating disease?
It's all very confusing. You wouldn't believe the questions we're asked! Under possible penalty if we don't tell them what medications we're on, if we have a debilitating disease -- I wish now, almost, that I didn't have a diagnosis! --- and all sorts of others. I can see them asking about EYES but not about everything else. Most people take some kind of medication, if only Advil.
Oh well, what am I worried about! I don't have to renew until 2007. Anything could change by then. (It even asks about changes in the last 5 years, but I'll go by what I put last time, I guess.)
Is Lyme always debilitating, do you think? Is it considered by law, or the medical profession at large, to be a debilitating disease?
Posted by bettyg (Member # 6147) on :
Welcome Cece!
I'm a chronic lyme person, and would like to ask you to edit your paragraphs to 6-8 lines of text and double space as you have done above.
We chronic lymies just can't comprehend longer paragraphs such as yours. Thank you for your help and understanding our advanced problems.
great topic!
Posted by mlkeen (Member # 1260) on :
Hi cecy- Glad you are not too stressed about your license any more.
Regarding language. At my sickest I could hardly make a coherent sentence, much less type it. I'm VERY tolerant of other's struggles to communicate. I feel it is the message not the mode the is the most important. Even healthy, I don't spell well.
If anyone has ever studied linguistics, you would understand that language is always under pressure to change. What we consider obsolete usage today was the norm in former times and what we accept as poor usage today may become accepted in the future. Language is shaped they the needs of the people speaking it.
Any language has many dialicts what follow accepted grammer rules in varying degrees.
![[sleepy]](graemlins/sleepy.gif)