this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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So I live in the US. I have 2 friends that got scurvy in 2017. How did they get scurvy you might ask? Let me tell you. They live about 30 mins from the grocery store in a car. Which they don’t have. The closest person that can take them grocery shopping lives about 2 hours away. Plus they’re poor as shit.
To save money they spent 3 months eating nothing but homemade biscuits (scones for non Americans). The lack of vitamin c gave them scurvy.
They live on a fixed income. My state tightened requirements for food stamps. They were fucked.
I will say that the UN came to my state several years ago. They literally called it the 3rd world and said it was the most impoverished place in the developed world. So, there’s that.
So that sucks, but I just don't see it being entirely about poverty in this case. There's not a single neighbor of theirs who they could ask "hey, next time you drive to Walmart let me ride with you"? They hit their diet to save money? There's no churches around them doing food pantry days?
Scurvy... You can prevent scurvy by eating literally anything uncooked, including meat. You can get vitamin C from grass. Sounds to me like these people are wholly uninterested in understanding anything about nutrition and diet and don't talk to their neighbors at all.
Yeah it’s kind of rural, but also people don’t talk around here. I don’t know any of my neighbors names, and I live in an apartment. Also, save money was really a polite way of saying pay bills or eat. Like, even now they don’t use heat in the winter which isn’t a big deal. But they don’t use a/c in the summer. Which here is incredibly dangerous. In the summer the temp regularly gets above 100F and the average humidity is around 75%.
Now things are better. His dad drives down once a month and takes them food shopping, and buys them stuff. But that still means most of the month is no fresh fruits, or vegetables, or milk.
The scurvy thing was just something that happened due to poor diet. Like, sure, looking back it’s easy to say “I’m getting scurvy. I better eat some vitamin C.” But the reality was they didn’t realize that they had scurvy until it was serious enough to have symptoms. After all who thinks about scurvy in 2017.
Why do they live like this? I understand you know, some people are just hard up, but eventually you try to sort it out right? Are they both disabled or something?
Yeah the scurvy thing is weird. It's like how antivax people don't think about measles and polio anymore and so don't see the importance of vaccination.
So, that’s a complicated issue. She is like 60 and disabled. She has MS. He is like 34 and isn’t disabled, but is her husband and full time caregiver. They are married, and spend most of their time playing video games.
He met her playing on a game server I used to host a literal lifetime ago. They got married when he turned 18. Honestly the whole thing is kind of gross, and I don’t really like her much. But, he and I grew up in the same town and share some experiences, and are friends.
They got into a cheap house and have been living there. Recently she inherited some money and bought the trailer and land that he grew up on. They are in the process of moving into it. Which is closer to me.
I think their rent has been 850 a month and she gets like 1100 a month for disability. So that doesn’t leave much for bills.
Goodness. Yeah I hate to be callous, but that sounds less like just having it hard and more like a lifetime of terrible decision making. Whatever the case is I hope they make it happen with their land plans and are able to make their lives easier.
I think it will improve, and I mean the truth is always more complicated. It is bad decisions, but it’s also bad circumstances. When they first got together she was a well paid nurse, and living in Oregon. They moved back here when she became disabled because it’s cheaper here.
But, that’s life ya know. As my father used to say “In life, you pays your money and you takes your chances.” I know he didn’t invent that saying, but he said it quite often when talking about how life doesn’t turn out the way you wanted.
If you're on certain types of disability you are limited in how much money you can actually have at any given time. "SSI beneficiaries are limited to only $2,000 in assets of any kind. For married couples or two-parent families with SSI beneficiary children, the limit is $3,000, which creates a marriage penalty because the couple limit is 25 percent less than the limit for two individuals." Hence the fixed income.