I am used to spotting docaganda on medical dramas, but it has been awhile since I watched a show where the propaganda comes from the patient perspective. I’m comfort-watching old X-Files and the Hollywood Healing is so shameless and funny. Gunshots, housefires, novel virus, hit by cars, left for dead in the desert, dehydrated by magic salt? Just get to a hospital for a health reset 😂
Tag: disability
Bespoke audiobook narration
Every now and then an audiobook has a feature I didn’t know I needed. This morning I am listening to a chapter about (political) organizing with a chronic illness, and you can hear the author-narrator yawning as she gets through it. Big love from this reader who is also too tired today.
Book is Overcoming Burnout, by Nicole Rose, done as a free private podcast feed. (Nicole is a herbalist I admire, who also wrote The Prisoner’s Herbal, and Herbalism and State Violence.)
Department of chainsaws for hands
I made myself a horror movie bingo card for October, and I am trying to think of a name for a trope I love.
What do you call that thing where characters have ridiculous and cool DIY assistive tech? I am thinking about chainsaws as prosthetic hands, homemade motorcycle-wheelchairs, and the other mayhem that shows up mainly in horror movies.
“Fuckin Rad Improvised Accessibility” is my draft so far 😂🤘🏻
Audio picture books?
I listen to a lot of audiobooks for small children and this is the first one I’ve encountered that includes image descriptions. It’s such a good idea! The small child I was listening with was so excited that I had to pause the story for celebrations. Alt text all the things.
The book is Secret of the Jade Bangle, by Linda Trinh.
I need to be precise in talking about it because infantilization is real, but there can be so much solidarity between children and disabled people.
Sunaura Taylor x Death Panel
I was coincidentally gushing about Sunaura Taylor last night, then woke up and realized she’s on the latest episode of Death Panel to discuss a new book called Disabled Ecologies.
I’m 10 minutes in and it’s already so good– looking at ecological damage as both a cause of and a type of disability, and many connected ideas and movements.
Something that helped me to process a divorce and then later to transition into long covid and disability life is a dance theatre performance I saw in 2016. I mention this because it is streaming on Marquee.
It’s about trauma and grief, so use your judgement. But even now i exhale so much tension when I remember that second half, how the giant pillar is still there on stage.
Millions Missing and counting…
I’m posting these little camas babies for #MillionsMissingFlowers , a monthly chance to talk about ME/CFS.
This month I am thinking about how long it takes to get an ME diagnosis, 5+ years or more on average. ME is already listed as a common (5%+) outcome of covid infections, and we’re just finishing year four. I wonder how many people will realize this year that they got ME from covid in 2020. I wonder about Omicron in 2022.
Sources:
- Conservatively, 5% of covid infections lead to ME (review in Nature)
- Time to diagnosis for ME, via #SolveME (pdf)
I really appreciated Bea in this episode of Death Panel, talking about the process of self-diagnosing before deciding to see a doctor.
She spent a year thinking she was just reading too much, before realizing she was going blind. Different conditions, but that’s so familiar to me– I spent a year thinking I was just sleep deprived or stressed before realizing I had cognitive and energy impairments.