Although the right to, you know, go quietly with minimal
fuss may be the one right disabled people like me would never have to fight
for(see also, Alan Grayson’s “Die Quickly,” comments, which, bald as they
seemed to me at the time, might have actually underplayed GOP hostility to the “least
of these.) I find there is a lot to like about Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book”. It is getting pounded in Amazon reviews by people as seeming
to suggest that caring for one’s health doesn’t matter, or worse, that people
past a certain age should find one of the few intact ice floes and settle down
on it.
I do think that the 70-year-old Ehrenreich has made peace
with her own demise, although I don’t think she is going anywhere that soon,
but I think her real goal is, as always to get us to question our own
assumptions about why we do what we do.(In some ways, I wonder if the vast
division of reviews for this book isn’t between those of us who have a more
established awareness of the limitations of medical care, and those looking for
the latest superfood to prolong an already comfortable path in life. I think I
know, but I’m not getting too attached to that assumption either.
Given that my
congenital disability being untreatable, and largely unfathomable by most
doctors(“That affects children, doesn’t it?” is a not uncommon response, even
though growing up affects children too) does lead to a great deal of
skepticism, I was surprised at how little trial-and-error research that some of
the most common medical testing has.
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