There’s an article in today’s New York Times about a woman named Stephanie Smith whose personal narrative is absolutely horrific. She ate tainted ground beef and was infected by e-coli and in the worst of all possible scenarios that infection left her in a coma for weeks. When she came out of the coma she was paralyzed. You can read the Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?hp
Stephanie Smith was a children’s dance instructor before this god awful catastrophe occurred. It is therefore entirely appropriate to say that her medical misfortune shattered her ideas about her career path. I can sign up for that. Please understand that my empathy and entire soul go out to Ms. Smith: paralysis is devastating and entirely unjust. Surely no sensible person would argue the point.
Still, the idea that Ms. Smith’s life is shattered is impossible for an old, grizzled disability rights advocate like me to endure. The article at the Times tells us that her life was shattered. The average “Pooh Bear” able bodied reader “reads this” and says to her or himself: “Yes, Piglet, her life was shattered. There’s nothing more for the poor lassie.”
Able bodied writers who convey disability as a shattered life engage in a cultural assumption that is wrong at best and destructive in the worst case scenario.
Suppose you were newly paralyzed? Would it help you to imagine that your life was over?
Who at the New York Times would tell you that you can teach dance and even perform dance with a wheelchair? Have you heard about The Dancing Wheels Company? How about The Axis Dance Company?
Did you know that people who use wheelchairs dance mightily, lustily, mythically? Did you know that the people who dance from wheelchairs do not have shattered lives?
God has indeed made a mysterious and contradictory image of Herself. And as Yeats tells us through the character of “Crazy Jane” who is a fool’s prophet in his latter poetry: “Nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.”
Would the reporter at the Times concede that disability is an opportunity?
No one in her or his right mind will say this version of the story is not difficult.
Not at all…
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
The line between compassion and pity
Last Sunday, the New York Times ran a feature on a young woman, Stephanie Smith from Minnesota, who became paralysed and brain-damaged after eating a home-cooked hamburger contaminated with a virulent strain of E-Coli bacteria. Such bacteria gets into…
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I read this article just this morning. I was so grossed out by the meat angle (who in their right mind still eats processed ground beef??) I didn’t pick up AT ALL on the ridiculous judgment of the future quality of this young woman’s life. I happened to follow the link here from WCD – thanks for your succinct commentary.
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Thanks to you and BadCripple (wjpeace), I’ve finally been able to find some words.
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Great post. What I worry about is what happens next time I visit the grocery store, the meat aisle in particular. Will some person that read the NYT story think my life is shattered too? Will they think I sit at home crying about the fact I use a wheelchair? Do they fear me? The story was nothing short of offensive.
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I am grateful to have my mind blown open when I read your posts. Thank you for this…
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