THE FUSE

Adult literacy advocate Toni Cordell recounts the story of feeling comforted when her doctor told her that her medical concern could be solved with an easy surgery. She agreed to proceed without asking further questions and didn’t understand the medical consent forms because she didn’t read well. At a follow-up office visit a couple of weeks after the procedure, Cordell was shocked when the nurse asked, “How are you feeling since your hysterectomy?” Cordell thought to herself, “How could I be so stupid as to allow somebody to take part of my body, and I didn’t know it?” She admits that although she graduated from high school, she only had a fifth-grade reading level, which she had always tried to hide from others.