transabled.org

 

• About
• Login
• Contact
• Accessibility

Google Search:
Web transabled.org Go

 

Home / Thoughts / Sean's Thoughts / BIID is disabling all right!

BIID is disabling all right!

Written by Sean on Thursday, August 14, 2008

As regular readers will know, I have been dealing with a "pretty bad patch" of BIID attack for a long time now. There are peaks and trophs, obviously. Yet it seems like my trophs are intense enough to be someone else’s peak. I don’t say this out of a sense of self-pity, it is a simple statement of fact. There have been some periods in my life since my teens where BIID has left me mostly quiet, if not entirely alone. But the more time goes by, the longer the BIID works on me, and the more intense these "attacks" get. And when I am in the grips of a strong BIID attack, I am quite disabled. I venture to say that I’m more impaired by BIID than I would be by being paraplegic.

It would be different, of course. One is a physical condition, the other one’s "all in my head". But non-functioning legs don’t impede the ability to be productive when most of your work is "intelectual".

As it is, with BIID tainting everything, I have no respite. Ever.

My need to be paraplegic significantly impacts and intrudes in most everything I do. It’s not just thinking about the need constantly. That would be enough to be really distracting. But it also stops me from being able to focus on what I’m doing. Whether I’m about to chop an onion with a big sharp knife and get distracted with what I’m about to do, or I’m in the middle of a transfer from chair to car, and I just lose track of what the next step is, BIID is causing major problems in my ability to function. But I’ve described that somewhat eloquently in the link above (even if I do say so myself), and I won’t continue to belabor the point.

The point is, BIID is more incapacitating than being unable to move your legs, or unable to hear, or unable to see, or missing a limb. I am not a productive member of society, or not as productive as I could be if I was not dealing with Body Integrity Identity Disorder. The Time had a wonderful article in May 2008 titled "Tallying Mental Illness’ Costs". The article begins with the question: "Should employees’ mental and physical health be considered equal in importance?", and goes on to say that mental illnesses cost the United States about US$193.2 billion every year. And that figure is conservative. So it’s not like I’m the only one being incapacitated by a psychological condition to the point of being unproductive. Further, it’s not just about being productive, but about functioning and being able to do your day-to-day activities.

And it’s not like I can just turn it off.

Someone who has depression recently told me, quite aggressively too, that there are medication to help people fighting with mental illnesses. She further said that I could "do something" to help myself out of it. She conveniently ignored the fact that medication does not work for everyone with depression. Or doesn’t work for everyone with bi-polar disorder, or schizophrenia, or any number of other conditions.

It’s not as if I hadn’t done anything to try and assuage the effect of BIID in my life. I have tried several different prescribed medications, on their own or combined, at varying doses. Heck, I’ve even recently gone back on medication! Some of the meds helped a bit with depression. But none of them touched BIID in any way, shape or form.

Not one single prescribed medication has helped with BIID symptoms.

I discussed this last year with a preeminent psychiatrist. After I gave him a list of the different medication I’d been on, he said something to the effect that if none of these medications helped, he didn’t know what would help, and that it was unlikely anything would. It’s not just me saying that medication doesn’t work!

I can’t pop a pill every day and control the condition.

Therapy ain’t much more efficient than medication. It helps in sorting your own thoughts in relation to BIID, and it’s certainly helped me to shed guilt and shame, and understand myself better. But even cognitive-behavioural therapy hasn’t been able to provide tools to control BIID.

The only thing that has been proven to work is for people to get the impairment they need. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has BIID and has managed to acquire their needed impairment has said that the moment they lost their limbs, they were at peace with BIID.

So here I am, here WE are, with a condition that invades our every thoughts, and impacts our every action. And the only way we have to find peace is denied to us by the medical community. We have a disabling condition that *could* be helped, but the people who could help won’t, for whatever reason. And so we continue struggling through life. We are, in truth, more disabled by BIID than we’d be with a physical impairment.

Tags: BIID, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Disability, Disabled, Impairment, Mental Illness, Paraplegic, Prescribed Medication

Twitter Updates

Follow me on Twitter