NDY board member Bill Peace has been writing more on his blog Bad Cripple. Two of his recent posts last 2 touch directly on NDY concerns.
In You Can’t do That, he describes the ways in which individuals and society focus hard on what he “can’t” do:
The instant negativity attached to disability is raised to a higher level when serious, life threatening illness is at issue. Cancer is bad. All illness is bad. Terminal illness is the worst–a tragedy. Terminal illness is the worst because our very existence is threatened. For some, the response to mortality is primal fear. Fear I get. I have felt primal fear and have had life threatening illnesses. I have almost died more than once. Primal fear however can be overcome with reason.
Read the rest here.
In The Disability Experience, he discusses the weirdnesses – from the annoying to the scary – in being a disabled person in this culture:
It saddens me that the input of people with a disability is so often ignored or dismissed out of hand. When I assert that assisted suicide legislation represents a serious risk to people with a disability, the elderly, and terminally ill I am accused as having an agenda. Sorry but no. I have no agenda. I have an educated opinion based on a detailed knowledge of disability history that should be part of the discussion about assisted suicide legislation. I also grew up on various neurological wards as a child and learned a few things about how hospitals operate. I had a physician offer to end my suffering by foregoing life saving antibiotics. Like many others with a disability, I have something important others need to hear. Don’t talk to me about safe guards built in to assisted suicide legislation. Don’t talk to me about dignity. Don’t talk to me about autonomy.
Read the rest of it here.