Fear Exists for a Good Reason

Over the past week I have followed the story of Amanda Baggs via various neurodiversity blogs. Baggs who I mentioned in my 500th post is an Autistic and a fascinating writer. She is most well known for her You Tube video "In My Own Language". Based on what I read, Baggs had gastroparesis that caused several instances of of aspiration pneumonia. As I understand it Baggs needed a feeding tube inserted to increase her nutrition and lower the risk of aspiration. This is not complex medical care--I suspect it is standard operating procedure. But her experience has been anything but standard. Multiple neurodiversity blogs and people directly in contact with Baggs have reported she was repeatedly questioned about her decision to get a feeding tube. Thankfully the neurodiversity community in particular and the disability community in general leaped to help and protect Baggs. Her experience in a Burlington Vermont hospital was a nightmare. Fortunately she not only survived but is in fighting spirit. She is writing about what she experienced and its implications. See: http://youneedacat.tumblr.com/

I was deeply moved by Baggs most recent post. What she wrote today is shocking and a testament to how deeply ingrained disability based bigotry is within the American health care system. Below is her entire post.

“Are you at peace with your decision?”

Before I got my feeding tube. After I’d already signed an informed consent form. A pulmonologist came into my room with a gaggle of interns and residents behind him. People who were learning from him. People who looked up to him as a teacher and role model.

He had seen my cat scan. He knew how many times I’ve had pneumonia recently. He knew it would keep happening if we didn’t find a way to stop it. He knew that pneumonia is a deadly disease and that my health was worsening with each infection. He knew how many doctors had tried to talk me out of choosing the feeding tube — choosing to live.

“Are you at peace with your decision?” Is a question I would expect to be asked repeatedly if I’d chosen to avoid treatment and go home and wait to get the infection that would kill me. Not a question that goes with choosing life. He asked me at least three times in a row.

I had a friend who came to visit from out of state, in the room with me at the time. She came because she heard I had pneumonia. Her father died of pneumonia. She was terrified for my life. She witnessed this conversation — easily, as she put it, the most genteel of the ways I’d been pressured to die.

And yet she likened it to the recommended harassment that people who choose abortion get — or for that matter, people who choose not to abort a fetus with disabilities. She said it was bullying, harassment, pressure to end my own life, no matter how genteel it looked on the outside. Who the hell gets asked repeatedly if they’re at peace with wanting to be alive? For me, choosing a feeding tube is choosing life. There were risks, there remain risks, but the risk of not getting the tube was imminent death, so, yeah. A no brainer, for me. When you choose between two risky things, you choose the one with the most possibility of survival. And feeding tubes are safer than aspiration pneumonia by far.

Are you at peace with your decision? Really? Seriously? Who asks that? Someone profoundly uncomfortable with the kind of life that requires certain kinds of technology. Someone who overtly or covertly hates disabled people.

I intend to use the life this feeding tube gives me, to ensure that no other patient in this hospital has to go through what I’ve been through. That nobody gets asked this question for choosing to live. Not even once. That doctors don’t get to try to persuade patients, especially disabled and other hated patients, that its better to reject life saving treatments. Regardless of what the doctor thinks. When I’m through with them, when the Vermont disability community is through with them, they will no longer be allowed to go there. They can stay bigots if they feel like but they won’t be allowed to express it on the job.

Because we don’t just naturally want to die the moment our body requires some kind of nonstandard way of sustaining itself. Right now I am hooked up to a machine pumping food into my intestines and I LOVE IT BECAUSE IT MEANS LIFE.

Genteel pressure to die. I too experienced that genteel pressure. Such pressure is put in ever so polite terms. For Baggs it was "Would you like to consider alternative treatments"? The non genteel interpretation is "Would you like to die"? For me a hospitalist stated "We can make you comfortable if you decide to forego antibiotics". The non genteel interpretation: "We can let you die."  This genteel pressure to die is not out of the norm. In fact I cringe when I hear the term "patient centered care". My translation of "patient centered care" is "you are on your own". Being on your own in a hospital is dangerous for any person but for a person with a disability the risks are exponentially greater. We people with a disability represent the limits of medical science and its failure. We are perceived to be in pain; suffering horrific indignities because we have lost our autonomy. Our bodies are compromised, abnormal. We are confined to a wheelchair. We are bed bound. Our life is a disaster. But wait! There is hope. We miserable cripples have the power to say no more. Hence the physician "caring" for Baggs asks "Are you at peace with your decision". The internists and residents that accompanied the physician have learned a lesson in empathy--or at least that is likely what the physician in question believed. I would offer the lesson learned was much more basic. Death is preferable to living a life with a disability. Who would want to live like that? Imagine if you had Autism. How horrible. I suggest we need to ask a very different set of questions. In Baggs case, the question is not if you want to live but rather how we can we as physicians charged with your care empower you to live a full life.