Dignity

Mr Ableism Proposes to Dispose of Miss Cripple Using the Sarco Death Pod

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments
deathstyles of the rich & abled, MALE-PATTERN BS, REGENCY CRIP LIT

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a neurodegenerative disease must be in want of an early death.

My dear Miss Cripple,
Illustration from Pride and aPrejudice with a standing Mr. Darcy and a seated Lizzie. Illustration now has Mr. Darcy offering a Sarco Death Pod and Lizzy sitting in a manual wheelchair,

Mr Abled’s proposal so enraged her that she could only reply, “You first, sir” when he presented her with a  Sarco Death Pod of betrothal.

Madam, in vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I pity you and plead you to accept my assistance  in hastening your death using the Sarco Death Pod on its Delicates & Gentlewomen setting.

In declaring myself thus, I am fully aware that I will be going expressly against the notion of a healthcare system that prioritizes people over profit, the rights of  many people with disabilities, and, I hardly need add, my own better judgment.

But, as you may have heard, “civil rights” for unfortunates such as yourself are now largely reserved for your demise.  Particularly when a gentleman such as your father has five daughters and only a small income. How may such as he afford to see your sisters wed if you and your costly care refuse to be dead? Continue reading →

I Want Them to Want Me Because I Will Need Them to Need Me But If That’s Not Going to Work, I Want a Lawyer.

/ Ingrid Tischer / 1 Comment

There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe

Every time Gretchen saw the DNR forms on her desk at home, a wave of resentment rose. How did she know what it was like to use a feeding tube? Or a ventilator? Or have minimal brain function, for god’s sake? It was like asking an eight year-old to sign up for – or against – puberty.
Choice was such bullshit. It wasn’t really her choice at all. The problem wasn’t too much extraordinary medical treatment, it was the limits of ordinary medicine to worry about, mostly financial. She didn’t have a problem being kept alive through artificial means now – she’d never seen a dollar bill push out of the dirt in spring – so she didn’t see any reason to assume she would resent it later on.

“Dear Valued Healthcare Provider,

“I’m glad everybody’s so concerned about honoring my choices. I choose to have my medical care continue regardless of ability to pay or insurance coverage, deductibles, prescription benefits, or other cost issues….”

Continue reading →

#WSPD2019: Suicide Is a Problem, Not a Solution for Living With a Disability. Yup, Even One That’s Neuromuscular, Progressive, and Degenerative

/ Ingrid Tischer / 2 Comments

2018 2019 UPDATE: STILL ALIVE

STILL OPPOSED TO EUPHEMIZING DISABLED PEOPLE BY NORMALIZING OUR SUICIDES THROUGH LANGUAGE

I’m still disabled, still degenerating, and still filled with joie de crip, but even if I weren’t, I still wouldn’t be buying the double-speak that calls my suicide “a rational choice,” “death with dignity,” and “ending my life on my own terms,” while a (seemingly) nondisabled person’s suicide is “a public health problem.”

The terms we use in talking about an issue set the terms of the debate. Suicide is a public health problem. Distorting that through sophistry marketing language feeds suicide contagion.

September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. But for a disabled person like me, it’s just not my day. Literally.

Increasingly:

What would be a “threat of self-harm” for you, is a “personal choice” for me.

What calls for an intervention for you, calls for a pre-suicide party for me.

Your movie is It’s a Wonderful Life. My movie is It’s a Wonderful Death.

When it comes to people like me, suicide is rapidly becoming normalized. Or more exactly, suicide is being erased through re-branding. “It’s not ‘suicide’! It’s ‘ending your life on your own terms’!”

But I want a great pre-end of life. I want to live on my own terms.Ingrid posing with her Respironics Bi-Pap S/T

Continue reading →

Dignity Is No Accident(s)

/ Ingrid Tischer / Leave a comment
Another Excerpt From There's No Cure for Gretchen Lowe a novelThere was a remarkable lack of public debate in San Francisco — or anywhere else — on Adult Diaper Dispensation (ADD). All costs were loudly underwritten by The Dignity Foundation (TDF), a charitable body dedicated to community development, medical research, K-12 education, and, now, small businesses hit by the “squat-by defecation” of serial defecants.
Allow TDF’s VP of Communications Lucre Smoothjoy to introduce your faithful repertory character, The Poor, who will today be playing semi-malicious poopers out to get Mom and Pop, who put every dime they had into The Backbone of American Business, their head-shop on Haight Street that sells bongs, whippet cannisters, feathered roach-clips, and what appear to be a number of human bones, including a few spinal vertebrae from, not an American Business, but the backbone of an American opossum from Bakersfield.
Would you like a TDF annual report? We have one for you right here. It makes no mention of our corporate sibling and sponsor, a disposable paper-goods manufacturer that is aging out of infant goods into a more mature market. Our Dignity Initiative public information campaign takes a broad-based social education approach to bring the public up to speed on what we can do — together — through top-level messaging in high-traffic spaces with framing that deploys innocuous word-play rather that blunt fear.
This top-level messaging was visible to all who cared to look out the car window at the blinking billboard near the off-ramp at Duboce. Dignity Is No Accident(s).
Continue reading →