Me Before You

[Scaper1]

James, you can type forever, you can continue telling everyone here why you lost so much more and why it's so much harder for you to bear it all, your honour code blah, blah, blah, but it will change exactly nothing. You need care to continue living. End of. It's not a philosophical question. And coping with the situation day in day out does not equal embracing some idiot theory that sci isn't so bad. Stop insulting everyone's intelligence.

[chick]

James' response to Oddity -

You are what I call a hopscotch kind of dude, as you can tell my perspective, principles ideology viewpoint whatever you want to call it has never budged since the day of my accident, you used to spout similar stuff at me when I first joined only difference is now I have more knowledge on living with sci. Maybe outside of this online community your perspective on the subject has or hasn't, that's not my point what I do know for a fact is you were the first to call Clayton weak and cowardly for what he did to himself, yet so many times when you talk to me you often dive into my lack of strength and will to commit to suicide.

I was just quickly skimming the last few posts and this (in bold) caught my eye.

So James, can you tell us more about this?

[lynnifer]

Interjecting this ... Hopefully you younger ones will NOT face decades of paralysis.

https://blog.cirm.ca.gov/2016/09/07/...-cell-therapy/

[chick]

In many cases. yes.
I respect those who can acknowledge that their life has deteriorated beyond a point that is respectable to them. I don't think it's right to live a life dependent on others just to exist.

Perhaps you enjoy someone wiping your ass?
Or maybe you delude your mind just enough to where it doesn't bother you. Either way, congrats.

It's difficult for me to have much self respect when having to endure the things that quads have to.
I can't ignore my realities. And I can't respect indignities.

Sure, I see things as they are, as they relate to me and the things I value and respect. Quadriplegia? Nah.

As I said, I wish I could embrace it. It's not something I respect.

Are you a complete quad? Just curious

You don't have much self respect, nor feel you have much worth or value. That much is clear. The thing is, having respect for oneself or another person, and having respect for a condition (quadriplegia) are different things. You don't have to respect the latter, you certainly don't have to embrace it. You can despise it and you can even be disgusted by it.

A condition is a state, it just IS. Quadriplegia is just a condition that IS, and like it or not, one really has no other choice (excepting death) than to deal. Some deal better than others. Some deal particularly well in even unimaginable circumstances. But learning to deal, maybe even dealing in a positive and hopeful way does not equate to respecting and embracing the condition, much less liking or loving it.

What you respect is the person who is dealing with the condition.
There is no 'dignity' in a condition. There's only dignity in HOW one deals with the condition.

[JamesMcM]

James, you can type forever, you can continue telling everyone here why you lost so much more and why it's so much harder for you to bear it all, your honour code blah, blah, blah, but it will change exactly nothing. You need care to continue living. End of. It's not a philosophical question. And coping with the situation day in day out does not equal embracing some idiot theory that sci isn't so bad. Stop insulting everyone's intelligence.

Ughh Figures! You are completely mistaken and misunderstanding everything I am saying. I am not talking about myself, I am talking about the situation as a whole. which means everyone who is injured and will continue to be injured! I did not speak with just myself in mind I provided real explanations to why certain people will never cope because of their individuality (hobbies, dreams, beliefs, expectations, principles, expectations, values etc.) and individual situation (previous lifestyle which obviously includes wealth/power good looks etc. And things like severity of injury, secondary complications, where they live, family etc.) , and other people are more predisposed to cope because of thesame factors. very quick overview. But if we are talking about me i'll explain: My problem is how I'm supposed to congratulate myself for living like this, and how people continuously complement me on the fact that I live with sci it is ridiculous it is a fallacy. When I talk to many disabled people some seem to believe they deserve some additional respect, or they believe them self to be mental Warriors, Often starts with insulting me or someone else for being weak. when I try to analyze, often through debate,but now it's getting obvious just by looking to some of the statements made. I can constantly see contradictions and jumping from one point to the other to constantly keep them self within their coping mechanism, more importantly a blatant disregard for reality and often trying to neglect the gravity of certain implications. which is fine there's nothing wrong with that ( for myself I find it disgusting but that's just me) but when someone has that perspective and takes a stance to claim that someone is weak because they don't follow suit that is a problem, that is idiocy and the irony again is very very palpable.

Where does all of this stem from, (also keep in mind I'm only talking from a perspective and generally the basis of the most severe injuries that are fully dependent ) but this kind of mentality stems,in its creator which is modern medicine's treatment for sci. And since day one I have been completely repulsed by it. The doctors, the psychologist, the pharmacist it's all a repeated, recycled process their best tool is using reverse psychology Again I will use an example from my individual experience but keep an open mind I'm talking about the process as a whole. They find out that I was an avid kickboxer before my injury, "oh you could take all those kicks and punches but you can't take this" "I thought you were strong" more often than not I will hear it from other disabled people ( which is another one of the big guns, use someone who has already accepted and embraced the provided treatment ) it's part of the rehabilitation process and it's offered inside and out of the rehabilitation centres peer support that kind of thing. Of course to a new injury these people hold more merit there for impact when using reverse psychology and if that's what they have to resort to. In my experience ironically they don't tend to be severely depended injuries to try that ridiculous reverse psychology they tend to be more incomplete injuries, Low cervical and or paraplegics my hypothesis is that these are the kind of people that the whole process the psychology and ideology behind it fits better for them, it makes more sense after all they have the function to work hard they have to lift themselves, they have to dress themselves, they have to do their own caregiving it's a struggle and obviously with any kind of struggle the interpretation for resilience is there. But again for myself and other people, I find the attempt at reverse psychology calling me weak because I'm not all open arms about having my ass picked, being carried, cbeing cleaned wiped and coddled every single day to the point I think death would be more suitable treatment and I refuse to embrace it. My strength, my resilience is itrelevant because I lack the physical function to implement it, everything that I do on a regular basis is a result of someone else's Hardwork; I get to school or work someone got me there, if it wasn't for them I would literally be exactly where it is they left me. So essentially I'm supposed to consider myself brave, mentally strong by sitting around asking for; even worse expecting help all the time, I wake up and I'm just to assume someone's there to start my day it's disgusting. And so the perspective that wow I'm such a courageous individual for being cared for, accomplishing things that really I didn't accomplish myself is ludicrous and yes in my perspective to believe that is delusion...

Why I want psychological evaluation on someone that has lived with very severe paralysis to the point where they're completely dependent for a long time, is because there would obviously be anomalies in fact I even think they would be visible on certain scans; if they worked at it it would certainly be identifiable one way or the other. there's many other conditions that I can use as a basis to extrapolate that this is true for example offhand Stockholm syndrome, institutionalization etc. as the mother of dragon said "people learn to love their chains". So whether they realize it or not, modern medicine's treatment for severe paralysis is two cotes us into a form of mental despair even damage that will lead us to eventually after a long enough time disregard our hopes and dreams, forget about our old expectations and/or principles completely forcibly adapt ourself out of desperation. Note the age old saying I've heard again and again "it took me five years" That makes me sick! What really bothers me is if paralysis was treatable ALL OF THIS our suffering, our coping mechanisms, our lifestyles the methods doctors and psychologists use, would all be; not only irrelevant but completely obsolete!! Think about it imagine if my paralysis were treatable from the moment of injury, but I looked to the doctors and my family and said "no I'm going to be strong, I'm going to be resilient and brave and I am going to live like this" and then I welcomed a lifestyle where my friends family, society, caregivers have to drain my leg bag, help me throughout my day with practically everything, I have to allow people to remove the stools from my bowls etc. If I was not murdered by my unnecessarily overworked caregivers and/or family, I would likely be admitted into a mental hospital and more than rightfully so! So with all of this in mind I cringe every time someone tells me I'm strong, or when aa disabled person tells me I'm weak because I despise this deplorable disability; and May in fact end my life rather than live with such "implications".

Now when things get even more troublesome to me is the state of spinal cord injury research and how impactful these kind of "accepting coping mechanisms" are on it, even more infuriating it's basically created by modern medicine simply because it has nothing better to offer the victims. When a quadriplegic resorts to three months of starving himself, it's brushed under the rug and you know what that kind of thing is so so dark and tragic that no matter what it would most likely be swept under the rug because it just might put a damper on someone's day/perspective.there's many examples like the paraplegic individual that constantly goes around saying how amazing his life is literally condoning spinal cord injury without realizing it (that really pisses me off when they are a very minor injury, and then there's other people that are suffering c1 breaks which is why I wholeheartedly believe everything below C8 should be completely disassociated with anything C 5 and above they are not remotely the same condition, it's like associating fibromyalgia to MS or Parkinson's) then there's people who publicly express we don't need to be cured no matter what injury you are that's criminal! But here let's look at the movie best of me, got a lot of media attention, it was everywhere for a few weeks and what did we do with the media attention? Well instead of using it to emphasize The dire situation of high cervical severe spinal injuries (The character was a complete C4) and the importance and necessity for medical intervention, we the afflicted decided to go on a completely unproductive tangent that wasn't going to help anyone. What really made me sick was a bunch of paraplegics, and or (very visibleto the educated Eye) really incomplete quadriplegic's took to the Internet to make videos of them going up and down the stairs, wheelchair equivalent of surfing ( assisted belly boarding requiring at least decent arms and hands) riding motorcycles (actually driving the motorcycles with their own armsafter bungee cording their legs) etc. then they went on to say how offended they were, how ablest and stereo typical it was about "disabilities" yeah I'm sure to to a paraplegic The lifestyle of a complete C4 did look pretty mundane or as they say stereo typical like they fucking know. Other disableds went to Twitter to harass the actors, and other people just went out of their way to say how pretty much all disabled people love their disability and their life is even more Active and productive than most able-bodied people * cough * delusion. And then it died out and the media attention we haven't seen since Christopher Reeves was no more and many people have suffered very high cervical injury since then, many new and old injuries have considered suicide even went through with itcertainly many have continued to get very sick because it secondary complications even killed, and family continues to work tirelessly for a lot of cervical injuries. And at the end of the day it just showed a lot of very less severe disabilities and their luxurious ignorance, it also showed just how fragile in some cases even delusional some of their inspirational coping really was. And more than likely send a few donations else where! As someone with a high cervical injury there was nothing stereotypical about the movies portrayal of a quadriplegic lifestyle; not all of us are lucky enough to be incomplete injuries and able to regain function/ ability through hard work they briefly established this in the movie too.

So here we are trapped in a chair, a lot of us completely dependent for next everything. I don't know iam under the deeply saddening impression that if one of us did get the opportunity to speak publicly to address the True gravity of the situation especially for the most severely injured ( A group that is often swept under the rug ) and they just went for it. They explained their daily schedule, they went into detail about what has to be done to them on a daily basis held nothing back for the sake of peoples lunches and their own fear of embarrassment/ disgrace. And then they went in to describe the helpless feeling when you're thirsty and having water a mere 3 feet away from your bed but not being able to get it,mine as well be on the moon. The harsh reality of having to ask for help constantly every day, and it's impact on feeling useless, pathetic and burdensome not to mention the fear of caregivers and or family getting fed up, angry and even quitting. The inability to even go out to do something, even a new found hobby like and cycling but not being able to go out to do it because you don't have anyone to help. The unavoidable increased financial demands. Of course they would obviously have to explain the undeniable health issues, the weak lungs and heart, never ending chronic infections as well as kidney damage and/or stones in the kidney bladder, diseased bones, a body constantly contracts and spasms rolling the limp body wherever it pleases. A constant reminder of the severity of the situation and your helplessness, the permanent damage that can take place with bowel and bladder care long-term even leading to deformities. A lifespan that is inevitably affected, increased likelihood for almost anything cancers, infections anywhere on the body, scoliosis, joint damage, stroke, cardiovascular issues etc. etc. all of which get worse The longer you are injured and greatly exasperates the inevitabledamage of ageing, most importantly almost all of which there's nothing you can do to help other than almost useless medicationand and or extreme surgeries and both of which definitely open the doors to other complications them selves. If it was done right, and truly explained the realityBest as words can there would not be a dry eye in the house. I truly feel that instead of support and additional push from the disabled community such a thing, a truly courageous thing would only be welcomed with defensive ridicule, whining and attempt to discredit their evaluation of reality from the disabled community. Which just makes me sick, oh what a brave courageous bunch we are trying to change the world... Yaaa

[JamesMcM]

Interjecting this ... Hopefully you younger ones will NOT face decades of paralysis.

https://blog.cirm.ca.gov/2016/09/07/...-cell-therapy/

Thank you very much for this. And God willing! And if we play apart, there is no more commendable and Noble accomplishment worthy of praise as well as self-respect. Even if it doesn't help us! Unless of course you got the cure for cancer lol that is one of the few things that would possibly be more of an accomplishment talked about leaving your mark, cmaking the world a better place!

[JamesMcM]

You don't have much self respect, nor feel you have much worth or value. That much is clear. The thing is, having respect for oneself or another person, and having respect for a condition (quadriplegia) are different things. You don't have to respect the latter, you certainly don't have to embrace it. You can despise it and you can even be disgusted by it.

A condition is a state, it just IS. Quadriplegia is just a condition that IS, and like it or not, one really has no other choice (excepting death) than to deal. Some deal better than others. Some deal particularly well in even unimaginable circumstances. But learning to deal, maybe even dealing in a positive and hopeful way does not equate to respecting and embracing the condition, much less liking or loving it.

What you respect is the person who is dealing with the condition.
There is no 'dignity' in a condition. There's only dignity in HOW one deals with the condition.

everything you said made perfect sense until your last sentence. That's clear delusion. If a condition leads to an undignified procedure, and a frankly pathetic completely dependent worse then infancy life style then it is an undignified condition. If you cope with something that is disgusting that does not make it not disgusting. when grown man, healthy man have to get their prostate checked the hairs on theif back stand up, The procedure is not even 10 seconds, and it sure as hell isn't fear of pain that's the main factor that makes our natural response repulsion. For God sakes most men take shits six times the size of a finger. Goodness this is the kind of "Stuff" that makes me shiver.

reminds me of the poster at my rehabilitation centre " they told him he'd never walk again, he became a sled hockey champion, he proved them wrong!" Blew my mind, and that kind of "stuff" is all over the walls there that is what they have to indoctrinate. Except of course they would not ever put anything about dignity or indignity inContext to sci out in public let alone bowel care. It's just something swept under the rug until the doors closed! To be 100% honest, and this isn't a nice thing to say but it is what it is to even be associated with a "group" that is supposed to be motivated let alone believe those kind of statements makes me suicidal on it's own! that's why I had such a fucking hard time in rehab, this kind of filth was everywhere, posters, what people said doctors, patients, even had my family talking like that briefly until I quickly and harshly made them realize how distorted to say the least such a perspective was. It's not like I can get out of the association with the group, can't just put in my resignation and erase it from my life. like you said only death can do that. Grave situation indeed!

[JamesMcM]

James' response to Oddity - I was just quickly skimming the last few posts and this (in bold) caught my eye.

So James, can you tell us more about this?

Google two arms and a head. Then read it. It was written by A man named Clayton that used to be a member here, before he ended his life. at times it is just very angry and miserable banter and other times it is very well written frankly relieving breath of realism that is so rare amongst the disabled community, in a tragic way it is quite beautiful! Many people outside of myself have addressed it as a reality most of us would rather not to Think about, but that doesn't make it any less valid and valuable.

[Rsm1987]

We'll never stop this train.

[christopher]

Google two arms and a head. Then read it. It was written by A man named Clayton that used to be a member here, before he ended his life. at times it is just very angry and miserable banter and other times it is very well written frankly relieving breath of realism that is so rare amongst the disabled community, in a tragic way it is quite beautiful! Many people outside of myself have addressed it as a reality most of us would rather not to Think about, but that doesn't make it any less valid and valuable.

Clayton. Wow. Now there's a blast from the past. Here's a big ol' thread about his suicide. We all had somethin' to say about it.

Am I deluded? Maybe. But if that keeps me from hating my life, so be it. Ignorance is bliss.

[chick]

Google two arms and a head. Then read it. It was written by A man named Clayton that used to be a member here, before he ended his life. at times it is just very angry and miserable banter and other times it is very well written frankly relieving breath of realism that is so rare amongst the disabled community, in a tragic way it is quite beautiful! Many people outside of myself have addressed it as a reality most of us would rather not to Think about, but that doesn't make it any less valid and valuable.

I'm aware of that writing. I was more curious why you would say Oddity was the FIRST to call him cowardly and weak.

[chick]

everything you said made perfect sense until your last sentence. That's clear delusion. If a condition leads to an undignified procedure, and a frankly pathetic completely dependent worse then infancy life style then it is an undignified condition. If you cope with something that is disgusting that does not make it not disgusting. ...

It's clear you don't understand the meaning of the words (respect, dignity, etc.) as they're being applied, or just simply refuse to get it as a convenient means to reinforce your critical judgment of others and satisfy your ego.

And AGAIN, coping (be it productive or not) with that which is disgusting DOES NOT make the thing not disgusting.

No need to continue repeating again and again to someone refusing to hear.

[Oddity]

I'm aware of that writing. I was more curious why you would say Oddity was the FIRST to call him cowardly and weak.

Clayton and I rode motorcycles together before either of us landed an SCI. I got hurt before he did. I may well have been the first to call BS on him but I was dealing with it IRL, not online. I avoided his nonsense, double user posting, arguing with himself, etc, around here. He actually turned me on to CareCure, but I didn't become an active poster (as DaleB) until shortly after he killed himself. After a while I did share a letter his mom wrote me, to underscore the impact of his weakness and inability to cope, under my previous username. He and I didn't see eye to eye on anything about the challenge of living with SCI.

[chick]

Oddity - yes. I'm familiar with that.

I was curious how James is familiar, when, per profile info, is 24 yrs old, injured in 2012 and joining CC in 2013. All the stuff re you and Clay was before he was even injured and not as your current user name. So search wouldn't have provided the info and not shown Oddity supposedly attacking. Unless you knew James IRL 8 years ago, before he was even SCI'd.

Now you revealed it before James had a chance to respond!

[Oddity]

Oddity - yes. I'm familiar with that.

I was curious how James is familiar, when, per profile info, is 24 yrs old, injured in 2012 and joining CC in 2013. All the stuff re you and Clay was before he was even injured and not as your current user name. So search wouldn't have provided the info and not shown Oddity supposedly attacking. Unless you knew James IRL 8 years ago, before he was even SCI'd.

Now you revealed it before James had a chance to respond!

Ahhhh...I see.

I recall James brining up some Clayton worship in a past thread in which I responded as I am apt to do.