Comments on: “A change in attitude led to my CFS cure!” – a rant

By: Linda

Linda — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:12:38 +0000

Living with is horrible illness is stressful enough, without the bias attitudes towards the illness. I feel some doctors are reminded when they see an illness like ME/CFS just how unpredictable life can be…..and this reminds them of their vulnerability….denial(for them) is the best way to protect themselves.

By: greenwords

greenwords — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:53:47 +0000

Ah, the old ‘change in attitude’ chestnut. Infuriating and dangerous nonsense.

By: Anna

Anna — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:03:49 +0000

Woe, I has been moderated! It is obviously because I’m posting from work instead of setting up breakfast like a good little night auditor. I shall now get back to the grindstone, I guess. :)

By: Anna

Anna — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:02:54 +0000

I really hate the bits that play into people’s sense of desperation.

I swear, if a doctor told me at this stage that cutting off my foot would make Don’s life less difficult, I’d ask if I had to do it myself or if a doctor would do it for me. Talking to Don’s mom about it, she’s much the same – with the special bonus of having blamed herself for having obviously “done something” while pregnant to cause his disability.

All this stuff – be happier, be healthier, move to someplace else, go to a different specialist, try this miracle cure, eat this miracle fruit, just get over it, it’s all in your head, all of it – it’s just so damned exhausting. It’s part of all that second shift for disability that Amandaw was talking about before, I think. Not only do PWD have to navigate the physical world, they have to do it all with such “helpful” advice – and have to balance how to say to well-meaning people that X is not working and do it in a way that’s Cheerful! And Nice!

By: su

su — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:54:37 +0000

I think it was just a post hoc rationalisation for not continuing our funding, Lauredhel. “We can’t afford the man hours” gets translated into “you don’t need this support” and furthermore you need to blah blah blah (my brain exceeded it’s daily limit for patronising garbage after the belly dancing suggestion).

By: Lauredhel

Lauredhel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:48:44 +0000

su: Boggle. The case manager is all about the “refrigerator mothers” theory? And belly-dancing is the off-the-shelf cure-all for “dysthymia” now? Bleagh.

By: su

su — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:55:04 +0000

Apparently the change in attitude can effect a cure even when that change occurs in a near-relative, not just the disabled person. I was told that I need to take up belly-dancing by a case manager. Apparently my son’s challenging behaviours are not related to his autism at all but to my very mild dysthymia. I look forward to the published article showing the causative link between parental dysthymia and autism. Of course this link was fortuitously discovered by the case manager immediately prior to our funding package running out and came with a side serve of shaming. “There are others worse off than you, you know.”

By: Deus Ex Macintosh

Deus Ex Macintosh — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 15:16:12 +0000

I have recently heard that the landlady who evicted me for not meeting her high standards of housekeeping has now accepted (a decade later) that I am indeed disabled (she thought I was faking it). However I should be more able-bodied than I am because I’M NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH.

Am not sure if that is an improvement.

By: su

su — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 03:14:05 +0000

I’m loving the ranting, Theriomorph. One of the things that really highlights the gendered aspect of attitudes to disability is the contrast between this kind of “disability as moral failing” nonsense that is directed at people ( and I bet women are the targets more often than not) who have chronic and unavoidable illnesses or disability and the extreme outpouring of sympathy and enormous fund raising efforts on behalf of injured sportsmen. I’m not even talking about professional sportsmen but local club level footballers who receive spinal injuries during a game. I haven’t heard even a whisper of victim blaming directed at them, even though their injuries were avoidable and it will be a cold day in hell before a woman with spina bifida or MS or any other illness will be gifted with a purpose built house and all the equipment they need to maintain the highest possible quality of life, all funded through community events. My sister was part of a group of friends who nursed a young woman during the final months of motor neurone disease. Getting the appropriate equipment so that this woman retained some dignity during toileting proved virtually impossible but a guy who is injured in a game has millions of dollars raised on his behalf. Fucking screwed up society.

If you are a woman and you have any form of illness, it will be used against you at some point, especially by those groups who are supposed to support people with illness and disability. DADHC in NSW attempted to have a woman with high functioning autism classified as having Munchhausen’s by Proxy because her children also had autism. Her DADHC case managers were clueless misogynists who had no idea how to communicate with someone with ASD and took the path of least resistance – blame the woman.

By: Lauredhel

Lauredhel — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 01:56:46 +0000

I can’t believe that doctor air-quoted your migraines, Theriomorph. Pratbutcket-fodder, for sure.

“[...]the faster I recognize the swill for what it is in most situations: the perfect marriage of magical thinking, horror of powerlessness, and outright misogyny.”

Quoted for truth!

Have I peeved here before at the potential ramifications of the “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” mindset?

The magical thinking seems to be all over, too. I think some of it boils down to “Medicine can fix pretty much everything these days, so if it can’t fix you, it must be your fault somehow.” There are correlations here with social bootstrapping and the notion that “everyone’s equal now” – therefore, the reasoning goes, if you’re not a rip-roaring financial success it must be your own damn fault too. And the whole lot ties back in to “We’re in a post-feminist world now!” eejitry, too. Is there a word for this phenomenon? The privilege of progress?