the full title should be : "A disabled person describes his nightmare on his blog and Twitter, and mobilizes the government", but not enough place in subject...
This takes place in France (just two days ago when I'm writing), and the story is related by an article on the French newspaper "Le Monde". I just translated this article into English for talking about it here. I guess not many people here are aware of this story, because there is not a lot of French people here.
The original article in French can be read here :
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2 ... _3224.html
Or here (I made a capture because after two weeks, these articles are only for subscriber) :
http://kantaro.fr/article-le-monde-fr.png
My translation is here :
A disabled person describes his nightmare on his blog and Twitter, and mobilizes the government.
Overwrought, Louis van Proosdij, a disabled businessman, published on Tuesday the 14th of June an article on his blog, in order to “seize some of the authorities, and the politicians, in order to alert, try to reverse the situation”. In a poignant note, he denounces his daily nightmare and the bad treatments of a home help society. Thanks to a huge solidarity movement via the social network Twitter, he finally succeeded Wednesday to get his problem resolved by the government.
Quadriplegic since an accident in adolescence, Louis van Proosdij needs daily help for going to bed at night and getting up, taking a shower and getting dressed in the morning. But his life was completely disrupted by a treatment protocol imposed about fifteen days ago by the private society Santé Service, specialized in home care.
“Today, I am in pain”
Him, who always lived “keen to be autonomic”, was faced with a “violent change to daily living”. The grievance list is long. Recently, he had right to no more than one shower per week, and his daily wash was performed at bed, with a bowl. He was also put to bed soon at evening, sometimes at 9 P.M., and woken too late in the morning to honor some appointments. His comfortable bed was changed for a medicalized bed in steel, with a mattress “harder than judo tatami”, while he can't change his position alone. “Today, I am in pain, my stability is broken, I am broken, I am a protocol”, summarized him in his call of help.
A suffering that he is not alone to endure. Louis van Proosdij repeats like stories of others disabled persons, published on discussion forums, and which complain of the same mistreatments.
His complaints to direction of the Santé Service society go unheeded. “I was told repeatedly, you will go through with it, it's a matter of time”, reports the businessman, recognized specialist of the numeric economy. A professional condition that his caretakers don't understand, which explains him that “it's necessary to stop to delude yourself, and to accept that maybe your disability doesn't allow you to work full-time like you persist to think in years.”
Solidarity impulse on the Internet
This call of help, published on the morrow of solidarity's day (Note of the translator : in France, solidarity's day is a former bank holiday, which is now a non-paid working day for funding actions for old people and disabled people.), created an event on the Web an on the social network Twitter. Directly taken to task by hundreds of Internet users who were touched by this story, some of the government members quickly reacted.
The secretary of State for solidarity Marie-Anne Montchamp, alerted, took contact with the service provider and the businessman. “There was an unilateral breach of protocol”, which is illegal, pointed out the services of Mme Montchamp. The Santé Service society “recognized an error and went to see M. Van Proosdij this afternoon for announcing him that they returned to the initial protocol”.
“Exemplary management of the different minister's personal staff and of the Elysée, in the era of Twitter and of hyper-communication, ”, summarized Wednesday Louis van Proosdij on Twitter, who hopes to make aware greater numbers about treatment conditions of disabled persons.
The original blog post can be read (in French) here :
http://blog.van-proosdij.fr/2011/06/14/ ... damentaux/
I will translate it also if several persons here are interested about this.
I'm waiting for your reactions.
PS : - I know they may be some English errors in my translation, so if you're a native speaker, you can correct me.
- No problem if you want to share my translation on others places, but please send me a PM to tell me where.
