"The worst part of being sick in America... is that you're booted out of the parade. Americans have no use for the sick. Now, look at Reagan. He's so healthy, he's hardly human. He's 100 if he's a day. He takes a slug in the chest... two days later he's out west, riding ponies in his PJs. I mean, who does that? That's America. It's just no country for the infirm."

It's true that ours is no country for the infirm, and consequently, some of the greatest suffering born of injury or illness arises from the threat of being disappeared before we actually disappear, of being prematurely dislodged from social discourse, left alone in sanitariums either physical or social. Of course it's deeply ironic, the way we treat our sick, not simply because we all fall apart eventually, but also because many of the philosophers, artists and saints we so revere found inspiration in the depths of suffering.