Thanks for de-cloaking :). And you’re most welcome. We try not to blast people who show an interest in understanding. Of course, it’s hard to understand, sometimes even for those of us who have BIID!!!

As to your question… It is actually possible for doctors to give surgery that would give paralysis. It’s a relatively simple procedure that would involve slicing the spinal cord. And you’re right, surgeons are unwilling to do this procedure, under claims of ethics and hipocratic oath.

As for insurance, you’re right, I doubt that I’d be funded by insurance, but that’s not something I need. If there was a surgeon willing to help, at least I would know that if I saved a certain amount, then I could do it. And if you think that some insurance companies pay for trans-gendered surgeries, it might be possible down the road to have BIID surgery paid for.

Thank you all for talking to me reasonably rather than just saying that I wouldn’t understand. I’m closer to understanding now but I get the impression that this is about as close as I can get. I’ve seen all kinds of disabilities in my life but I’ve never really been exposed to BIID before so I wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about it.. if that makes any sense.

I realize that I kind of thread jacked your original post, Sean. So I’ve got a question relating back to that. If medical science were able to give someone voluntary paralysis, do you think that you could find a doctor who would? Besides that, I don’t think you’d have much luck getting your insurance to pay for that. Just.. a banana for though.

:-)

Being transabled I don’t understand why I feel I need to be a para. That’s partly why we all congregate here. None of us ever feel like we’re going to come to a place where we’d understand why we are who we are, but we feel like we’re getting that much closer to self acceptance talking it over here. I’m fortunate enough to have the experience to know that if anyone did ever want my problems they would be just as ashamed and guilty of it as I am needing to be a paraplegic.

Your question is difficult to answer. I don’t know *why* I feel better when I am in a wheelchair, despite years of therapy trying to figure it out. I just know that I do feel better.

I can tell you that it feels *right* for me to use a wheelchair, that I feel more myself, more at peace, but that doesn’t answer your question of “why”…

Maybe other people can explain it to you, but I don’t know anyone who actually has figured it out.

I’m sorry you’re offended. I responded to you by email, but as you’ve posted your email in a comment as well, I have copy/pasted my response here as well for the benefit of others.
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Thank you for making the effort of contacting me to try and understand. It most certainly is a puzzling condition that is difficult to understand for people who do not have it.

I want to assure you that no one with BIID is mocking people with disabilities. It is far from making a joke of it all.

People who have BIID are not in it for the “glory”. We aren’t needing attention. We don’t want to get sympathy. And we certainly aren’t naive enough to think that having a disability is just fun and games.

The fact is, we have not chosen to have these feelings. I don’t know
anyone who would chose to be ostracised by society, verbally assaulted, shunned. I don’t know anyone who would actually pick to have BIID and endure the constant emotional anguish that we do. We no more chose to feel the way we do that gay people have chosen their sexual preference. It is part of who we are, from the youngest age.

It started when I was 3 or 4 for me. Long before I knew about wheelchairs, paraplegia, spinal cord injuries, etc. I just knew that my legs needed NOT to work. I knew, in the deepest part of myself that my “normal and functioning” body was not the body I should have had. I guess a comparison you might understand would be to compare BIID to GID, Gender Identity Disorder. For many of us who have BIID, the experience is similar to transsexuals, except that instead of needing to be in a body of a different gender, we need to have a physical impairment.

My use of the wheelchair is not a joke to me. It is not a way to mock people who use wheelchairs because of a physical impairment. For me, it is therapy. It is a tool that allows me to be functional in my day-to-day life. Just like a wheelchair is a tool for a paraplegic to move around, and a cane is a tool for other people to allow them balance, the wheelchair gives me enough peace of mind that I can actually function and go through life.

You know, I am very familiar with the experience of having a disability in public. I know the stares. I know the little fixed smiles. I know the people yelling at me, or speaking slowly, because they think I’m stupid, just because I’m in a wheelchair. I know having to wait for an accessible stall at the mall while a couple teenagers are having a quickie in it. I know all that and more. And it’s not about that. It’s not about other people’s reaction to me.

It’s about me being myself.

I hope that explains it a bit better for you. It is a difficult topic to wrap your head around, and even myself sometimes have a bit of problem “getting it”. Please feel free to ask me any question you have.

You’d still be using the chair due to BIID, but the treatment for BIID at that point would be surgically assisted disability, in your case limited paralysis.

I was just floating around the idea (and I think Claire was, too) that if SCI is seen as easily curable, it won’t be thought of as such a drastic measure by surgeons, who would then see it as a more legitimate treatment method for BIID to purposely injure a person. The ability to ‘cancel’ the treatment, makes a lot of doctors a lot more comfortable about things. It’s like a medication. A doctor would be more reluctant to give the medication if there was a large chance that a negative (at least to them) permanent effect could occur that they can’t reverse.

There may come a time, when BIID in the form of needing paralysis may become easier to accept to many, when a SCI can be readily cured. It will be viewed as more commutable once there is a cure to reverse the damage – people could come to view SCI not much differently then getting a cut on the elbow, or something of that nature, in the future.