Would you like to have a terminal illness?

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I have been prescribed anti-depressants, stong and mild. I now take Lexapro and feel so much better. The feeling is like one of calm serenity. The other medications I was given were too strong for me. I used to think like you and thought there must be better ways to control the mood problems. I drink chamomile and peppermint teas to help calm me also.

Sometimes, like it or not, the medications are necessary and they do work if taken according to directions and not taken in over abundance as drugs or with alcohol to increase other personally desired effects. The pharmaceutical companies need to have their prices more regulated but for some reason our country does not feel the need to do this so yes those companies make big bucks off of our medical needs. The fact that there is something out there that can help us with medically diagnosed problems should not give due recourse to the pharmaceutical companies to charge us out of the backside for medications. Our government should protect the consumers by regulating pricing for drugs.

Look around you though, because lately our big business comrades have taken it upon themselves to deal with the drug cost issues. Many companies who have pharmacies as part of their business are offering discounted generic drugs at one flat price so that Americans can afford some of the drugs that we do need to maintain our physical and mental health. These companies are our champions in pushing forward in the goal for pharmaceutical pricing regulation. We the public need to rally our voices and push to gain more support from these big companies so that they will champion our cause and help to lower even further the costs of drugs in America.

This thread pisses me off in its existence, but this comment is particularly egregious. Terminally ill people are "the shell of a being"?! ! Aside from being factually wrong--many terminally ill people are quite lucid for long periods of time--the statement is just gross. You're complaining about how other people degrade you, and yet you yourself degrade others? This statement is especially bad because the OP mentioned nursing a family member through terminal illness. How very compassionate.

I'm very sorry that you and others here have suffered so, but this resentment directed at terminally ill people is really misplaced. Somehow I doubt being treated sympathetically (or with pity) is so great when you've gone through months or years of painful illness and treatment only to know that you're going to die anyway. Argh.

Yeah.

Most terminally ill people I have known don't want the pity, they've done what they have to do to get used to the fact they're going to die, and they want to live until they die, not be treated as if they're dead already.

It's no different than if I were to get hit by a bus next week and killed, I'd still be me and still alive until that happens. Everyone's going to die but when you have a terminal illness it just means you know more about when it's going to happen.

I remember reading a book by a disabled lawyer. And she talked about how one of her clients had AIDS and wanted to get his affairs in order before he died. And she said he loved her because since she had a condition that had made her prepared for death since she was a kid (she hadn't expected to live to adulthood), she had no hangups about death, didn't shower him with pity, and just got on with it. He had been clearly nervous about her possibly pitying him, and when she just matter-of-factly said "Okay, so what are you going to want to do with your stuff once you kick the bucket?" he totally relaxed and got on with it because he knew she was not going to pity him or get nervous about talking about death.

But anyway... yes, terminally ill people are not a shell of a person. Not even when it affects their thinking -- even people with severe dementias or delirium or other cognitive impairments are people. And it's really offensive when people talk about them being empty shells or vegetables, same as it is when people talk about us that way.

Brilliant post and an excellent story too. Very inspiring. People are in general far too afraid of dying.

I think it is an interesting thread, the OP is surmising. He has worries, he's looking at what he sees as the reality of his situation, and he sees death as an option as being a way out. Also it brings up a taboo subject, it's a good thread.

I'm curious to know why it is impossible for you to be what you want.
What are the issues that prevent you from getting to where you want be and doing what you want to do. Maybe there are ways to problem solve and find tiny steps that can help you get to where you want to be.

I am a painfully shy and nervous person, once I would go red in the face and be overwhelmed with nervousness just to walk into a hospital. Now I work in one.
I still come up against barriers, also, I'm happy to be a slave to drug companies, they are my gods.

Edited to state, drugs do need to be taken with care and caution.

Clearly you misunderstand. The body is the shell of being; the body is dying. I'm not angry at the ill - why would you suggest such a thing? How did you get that I was envying the sympathy they recieved? Please, pay closer attention before commenting.
Don't simply accuse people of such things with only minimal information.

Yeah, I thought that might have been misunderstood, but that's the downside of talking to people on the internet. Since they can't hear the tone of your voice, see your facial expressions, you can't explain yourself right away etc. sometimes it's difficult to get people to understand what you're trying to say. So, I wouldn't say the poster wasn't paying attention, more just didn't understand what you were saying.

And don't you eva feel the shame amounted from the absurdity and ignorance of such thoughts? Nevermind the need to broadcast it for the world to hear....

and Omar apologizes for raisin' this shameful corpse of a topic from the netherworld of dead threads that it rightfully belongs in. but some things gotta be off the chest before they start you suffocatin'

no wai

I sometimes wish I was born without limbs instead of having AS.

People I've worked with don't (want to) know what it is like for me to be in different situations. They see me as a "normal" person, an therefore as a dumb person. While my co-worker with a handicap and a wheelchair got everyone walking on their toes to fit his style of working and needs.

She probably does man. It doesn't make the fact change-she feels that way. F-ck, why do people have a thing against someone "unnatural" in the way they think or feel-even aspies do this to other aspies. Of course it's not freaking normal, and shameful, but it's natural in the progression of things, stuff that goes on-and she's thought like this for a freaking reason. It's like farting-you can't stop it, and there's a reason behind it. Absurdity and ignorance? You my friend take the cake. You know nothing about her, and why she thinks the way she thinks.

When I was young, I fantasized about my death, about my own torture, about many things. NOT f-cking normal (maybe it is, but there was no real "cause" for this, just sh1t would form in my head), and I know something was wrong-but why wouldn't I tell anyone these things? Cos I wasn't screwed up on the outside, and dipsticks like you are quick to pin the problem down.

That actually happened to me in a really weird way at a conference once that I was presenting at.

I was in a wheelchair, so I was given a room near the elevator, even though someone else was pushing me and it was not that hard for either of us to get around.

Another presenter had a very painful and badly-healed broken ankle with a botched surgery on it as well, and found it really hard to walk anywhere, although she could walk on it. They gave her a room all the way down the hall.

Although I almost never willingly allow people to use my wheelchair, I voluntarily loaned her my wheelchair for five-minute periods when I knew I wouldn't be using it, because I couldn't stand to see her limping around in that much pain.

I bet if she'd come on crutches they'd have actually done something, too.

Most of the time though, the attempts at help people give to me as a person in a wheelchair, end up being really messed up. The classic example is people standing in a doorway holding the door open, so that I can't move through the door because they're in the doorway. But there are lots of others. I'd say a huge portion of the help I'm offered is actually actively obstructive rather than helpful, and a lot of the rest is just non-helpful and a waste of my time. And if I refuse (even if it's for good reason, like that accepting the "help" would injure me, and even if it's done politely rather than grumpily) some people turn nasty, even belligerent.

I like that I can get around outside my house through the use of a wheelchair (I was nearly housebound by the time I accepted one) and sometimes crutches (for pretty short distances in situations where the chair isn't feasible), but I really miss not having a zillion offers of non-constructive "help" all the time.

The only random-stranger offer of help I have not minded in recent times, was a year and a half ago when I was crossing a snowy/icy street the day after a blizzard (on crutches with pointed tips mounted on it for use on ice, almost like metal cleats), with a sack of groceries, and the sack split open in the middle of the road. I was very grateful when someone came along to pick up the groceries. (But then I still had to go all the way back to my building while trying to hold milk and orange juice containers with my bare hands in subfreezing weather. I'm normally okay in the cold but that was a bit much, and I ended up collapsing downstairs and waiting awhile before I could get my body over to the elevator to get home.)

The fact that I can remember such an event a year and a half later speaks to how constructive most offers of help I get from strangers are(n't). It's not that I mind people helping, it's just I think they should (a) make sure that they're really helping before they jump in and help, and (b) should think the physics of the situation out to make sure their idea of help is even [i]plausible[/i ] before offering it. And if I'm on my crutches it's also really awkward because I can't communicate much that other people can understand while using both of my hands to walk with (sometimes true in a chair too, but much less often true).

I think (with "invisible" vs. "visible" disability, which often just translates into "familiar" vs. "unfamiliar" disability in reality, since I don't find autism/other neurological atypicality necessarily all that invisible even in people who are passing, because I'm familiar with it) it's a situation where the grass is always greener on the other side, and it's not actually better one way or the other, just different kinds of suckiness and different benefits to each. (Here I'm talking about mostly non-terminal conditions.)

Well now, what do I hear but da gallop'n hooves of Claire's knight-n-shin'n-armor -But who beckoned? It seems either our would be savior don't think our damsel Claire can properly speak for herself ... or -wait- what we got here... Omar be see'n streaks of red seeping through the plates of my man. It seems Omar's words rung far wider than he could have anticipated, and have pierced - as collateral - the gleaming skin of our righteous paladin, who now be tak'n it upon his broad shoulders to got Omar.

Now that we got that matter settled...

Now one thing should be cleared up right now...Omar ain't try'n to stifle anybody's personal expression (not that he could even if he tried) Maybe Omar's original language was a bit agressive to that effect, however,If you gonna vent, then vent- but...

Honestly, what you expect the reaction to be when you* (*not address'n you specifically, cuz you didn't say nothin' to the extent till now) air out that - as you put it - shameful flatulence.
The "public decency" to act all sympathetic whilst they secretly shake their heads in wonderment?
Maybe Omar could put you* on his lap and calmly explain the error of your ways, but others in this thread have done that more than adequately. Maybe you expect Omar to dive right into a collective circle jerk, but Omar can't swim in that sticky malaise. Or maybe, ...possibly, you should expect someone to put to words what would be the common, unuttered thought. At least Omar's got the courtesy to.

Maybe it was a natural thing to be flashing in your head, but for a well-adjusted individual to be dwelling upon it is pointless, and for someone who aint it is potentially harmful. but hey, if you gotta air out your mind then by all da means of the world- do so, just dont get too riled up if others decide to do the same.

And just for future reference... "ignorant" is the fact that Claire's (just as one example) idealized depiction of a prison seems so far removed from any reasonable bounds of reality (unless she come in here later and tells and gives proof 'bout her uncle's time in prison which amounted to an extended stay at the ritz, somehow Omar be doubting that), and "absurd" as in the idea that an aspie enjoy'n prison, much less last'n in one...is kinda...funny.


Now, what you said before is just your standard trim and proper chivalry talk, but what you get into next is much more interesting...



OOh, this IS much more interesting. What's wit the personal projection and harsh words man, might this be an elaborate attempt to incorporate Omar into your private s/m fantasies? If so man, just give Omar the safe word, and he'll be ready for the whipp'n.

If not, Omar suggests you let go of some of that personal spite...just let it go

Wow. I did not mean to turn this thread into a fight about me.

Fact is...I have had a lifetime of feelings of shame, guilt, and overwhelming anxiety about most everything I say or do. Even though I am a good person. I have always been a freak. I am just now learning why. Sorry if my thoughts upset you to the point of needing me to feel shame. I thought this planet was somewhere they might be accepted...

life is a terminal illness.