transabled.org

I have been raised by a woman who is pathologically afraid of debt. She took out a mortgage and paid it off within a year, through measures that some would think were drastic. The lifestyle we lived was not what you’d expect based on the house we lived in.

I’m not saying that’s something that is easily done or that any given person could do. I mention it only so you know my position on debt – TERRIFIED OF IT.

However… In your situation it seems to be a choice of debt or dead… You’re just treading water.

It’s terrifying and it may not be easy (or possible – obviously I have no idea of your financial situation, whether you own your own house or whatever) but if you can get a loan… I realise no bank manager is going to give you a loan if you go in and say “I don’t want to walk!”

What am I saying?
I’m not sure.

If there’s any way you can scrape that money together… credit cards, remortgaging, personal loans…
You expect your productivity to increase once you are a para… So…?

Just my thoughts. I appreciate you’ve gone over all of this from every angle before!

Sean, my message to you would be to change your life. I’m going to sound hard but you know me :) as well as I know myself so as a true friend I can say these things.

Get out of your rut by 1) changing jobs, 2) quit or greatly reduce the time spent here and get planning a second lucrative career and 3) when 1 and 2 are done put all you have into the surgery project (see Gravity above).

You CAN do it Sean, and you WILL.

If not I’ll come over and kick your ass!

(There will now follow dozens of pathetic responses from a multitude of undecided, uncertain, lost lambs but I don’t care. It’s time to put a STOP to negative thinking.)

Gravity and Peter, thank you for the comments.

As I said, people will find me defeatist.

Gravity, I have NO assets. None. Only debt already – nothing major, but enough. I *have* spoken to my bank manager about a loan for “a medical procedure not available in this country”. He did not ask what the procedure was, was very sorry, but I am not a good candidate for a loan without backing.

Peter, changing jobs wouldn’t help, I am in pretty much as lucrative a job as I can get to. Reducing the time online is not an option – my connection with you and other people through email and the site is one of the only positives I have: It is quite literally a lifeline. A second job is also not an option. I simply don’t have the energy. It takes ALL my strength to manage to hold one job.

As for “STOP to negative thinking”, easier said than done.

OK, We’ll work on other things. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Or, in your case, Where there’s a will you must be in it”!

Ah Sean.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to solve your problems.
But I am saddened by this news.
If I think of any way to raise 25,000$ I’ll let you know…

Here, here Peter!
This has been my mantra here for the last two years. Nice to see someone else is able to see light in the darkness (for all light is seen only BECAUSE OF darkness; think about it).

Sean, I am sorry you are having tough times; I have most certainly been there, and I know how extraordinarily difficult it is (at first) to change one’s perspective of such tragic events! However, it IS possible in ANY situation.

(On my myspace account at http://www.myspace.com/daniellesaintemarie there are two blog entries about self-esteem and perspective; I highly recommend all here–even those that are already positive and happy–read the posts and get all books mentioned in them.)

My wish for you (and all here) is that you find a way to happiness, resolution and positivity through this–or any–situation. Again, I am sorry for your troubles.

All My Love,
~Danielle aka Alicia

Hi Sean,

you are describing the situation of 95 % (or more) of the people with BIID.

And the situation of the biggest part of the world’s population. Most don’t have BIID, but other problems, and most can’t get medical help. Many don’t even get food.

This doesn’t mean that your suffering is less. Maybe they can bear it with more power.

I don’t have the money for surgery, and I don’t know a surgeon who would do it. My work goes not well, because I have not much energy. And because I spend much energy here and elsewhere and much of it is neutralised by BIID itself.

But Peter is right to some extent. The time I spend here could be spent for a work which pays at least some Euros. Or for recreation, real recreation.

I see only one real option: Build a pressure group on and take part in research. Some day they will have to come up with a “solution” (or even a variety of solutions) for us.

The other thing is to think about cheaper surgeons or safer do-it-yourself methods.

One thing I don’t quite understand: You say you don’t want to be a para with arthritis, but an active one. But you fear you will be one. Wouldn’t it be better not to become a real para then? Regardless of now or later.

I don’t know why, but I have the impression that Peter is right: change your life. Because I sense that you are unhappy with other aspects of your life as well. What about a change of your job, place where you live, partner, friends, …?

You seem to live somewhere where there is no good therapist to get. Therapy hasn’t made my BIID go away, but helped me a lot to live with it.

Do you like your job?

Hi Alicia,

Thanks for posting here. I’ve read your entries and there is a lot of good stuff there. I can honestly say, however, that lack of self-esteem is not in the pile of my biggest issues. At some level we all suffer from it, of course, but it’s not the beiggest issue for me.

@Phil, you ask: “You say you don’t want to be a para with arthritis, but an active one. But you fear you will be one. Wouldn’t it be better not to become a real para then?”

No, it would not be better to not become a real para. If I never have the chance to taste life in the body I have felt I should have since I was 3 or 4, then, there is absolutely NO reason to keep on living. none.

The problem with therapy isn’t that this is a small town that doesn’t have “good therapists”. I have been in other places, bigger ones, cities of millions of people. There were also no real therapy available. Yes, therapy can help, up to a point. I have passed that point. I have done as much as I can short of surgery. I have been on this path of actively looking for a “solution” for 25 years. 15 of those have seen me presenting as a wheelchair user – using my wheelchair nearly 100% of the time I’m in public. I don’t think at this point any therapist, good as they are, can give me what I need, not through therapy.

As for your other comments, I can’t answer that in public.

Dear Sean,

I hope you believe me that I do feel with you.

You wrote: “f I never have the chance to taste life in the body I have felt I should have since I was 3 or 4, then, there is absolutely NO reason to keep on living. none.”

I understand it well. But … for hundreds of years it just was IMPOSSIBLE to get gender reassignment surgery. It just didn’t exist, nobody was able to do it. I know our situation is much different. It would be so easy, technically/surgically.

What I want to say is maybe: Were the lives of all these men in female bodies and women in male bodies lost? Did they have no reason to live?

There’s one big reason to live: you live. You are here. You are meant to be here. Without you, the world would lack a lot.

I try (I just try, not more) to give my life some meaning. It is difficult. Most people have a work which doesn’t appear very meaningful. We become more and more lonely, sitting at the computer screen.

Before the computer, when somebody sticked his head in books only, what would we have said about him? Now it is completely usual to stick one’s head in a computer screen all the time.

But that’s another topic. Back to what I wanted to say:

Do you know Viktor E. Frankl? He was a neurologist and psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps. He wrote a lot about meaning. Worth reading, really.

I try not to think that IF one central desire of mine is unfulfilled, then ALL of my life is useless, meaningless etc.

Because if I did that I would also think that people with disabilities, ill people, poor people, everybody who suffers has a meaningless life.

Life needs no reasons, it HAS a meaning. Otherwise it – and you and I – would not exist. But it is not so easy to see, and maybe Frankl is right that we have go GIVE our lives meaning.

That’s what I meant when I asked if you like your job or your place or relationships…

Some thing is around, somebody who needs you.

For example: we here.

Phil,

I’m sorry to say this, but we’ve been over this time and time and time again. It is totally and utterly useless (in Sean’s case and mine, at least) to say “find a meaning to life”. There will be no meaning, no motivation and no happiness without the appropriate surgery.

However the current objective has to be planned thoroughly and the ways and means HAVE to be found. They WILL be found and we’ll be able to live normally.

It is now time to stop going over the causes of BIID and exploring ideas that we now know to be futile.

There is one goal in sight and we are going for it with all our determination. That’s why I suggested earlier that it’s time to put the house in order and weed out some of the time-consuming, non-lucrative and often depressing chores.

Hi Peter,

I can just talk about me. I’m not you or Sean or anybody else.

For me it is possible – not always, but sometimes – to see a meaning in life, regardless of the fact of BIID and if I have legs or not.

For me it is very important to be with people and see perspectives in my life. This needn’t be just and only amputation.

I’m living NOW, or at least I try to.

And “to put the house in order and weed out some of the time-consuming, non-lucrative and often depressing chores”, as you suggested, is ALWAYS right, not just when surgery is in sight.

Well, but that’s just what I am thinking. No recipe for others.

Peter, could you tell me more about how, where and when you think a solution can be found?

I don’t see one for my BIID in the near oder middle future.

The solution, as Sean’s post says, is $25k. Actually I think it could be way less but I know Sean has included all the necessary adapations in his budget.

We know you don’t see a solution for you Phil, but the post is about Sean’s problem. He has half a solution. The frustration is unbearable.

The only solution for Sean (and me too) is surgery to paralyse the leg(s). Reading a book about a holocaust survivor is going to change nothing.

@Peter, my cost does not include modifications, as I already have that. But it does include travel for two + stay at the place where surgery is happening.

Ball ping hamer to the back will do the trick.

@bob – No, actually, a ball pin hammer to the back will NOT do the trick. If it did, it’s an avenue I would have taken. Long ago. A ball pin hammer would only break bone and cause soft tissue injury. The 2″ layer of muscle over the spinal cord would absorb the hit of the hammer, and get thoroughly mangled in the process. If you’re lucky, the spineous process of the vertebrae (that’s the bit that sticks out) would break. It is unlikely the vertebrae itself would be broken. Even more so that the spinal cord would be damaged. Then of course there’s the fact that you can hit yourself with a ball pin hammer in the back, so you would have to find someone willing to be arrested and thrown in jail for pretty massive assault.

I really, REALLY wish people actually THOUGHT before making these “suggestions”.