Just when I thought the ‘Condescending Wonka’ meme had run its course, he goes and does something like this…and totally redeems himself (for the moment, anyway). 🙂
Marilyn and Her Ovaries
The fact I’m a woman is important and means much to me. -Marilyn Monroe
This is pretty interesting. From Letters of Note (h/t NFP Works):
On April 28th of 1952, medical staff at the Cedars of Lebanon hospital in L.A. wheeled an extremely nervous Marilyn Monroe to surgery where she was to have her appendix removed. Some time later, with Monroe unconscious and the procedure about to begin, doctors pulled back her gown to find the following note taped to her stomach.
Click here for a pic of the letter which reads:
Dear Dr. Rabwin,
cut as little as possible I know it seems vain but that doesn’t really enter in to it. The fact I’m a woman is important and means much to me.
Save please (I can’t ask enough) what you can – I’m in your hands. You have children and you must know what it means – please Dr Rabwin – I know somehow you will!
thank you – thank you – thank you – For God’s sakes Dear Doctor no ovaries removed – please again do whatever you can to prevent large scars.
Thanking you with all my heart.
Marilyn Monroe
I wonder what Marilyn would think about how so many women today reject or take for granted the very thing which makes them a woman by deliberately suppressing that part of the female body she knew was so valuable with artificial contraception…
Fox’s Stem Cell Honesty
Three years ago on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Mehmet Oz told Michael J. Fox that his quest down the yellow brick road of embryonic stem cell research may lead to nowhere. It didn’t seem to fully register with him at the time, but now he may be catching on.
In an interview with Dianne Sawyer, Fox and his Foundation partner Debbie Brooks admitted that stem cells may not provide a cure for Parkinson’s Disease, which Fox has. Presumably they were talking about embryonic stem cells (ESCs), though they never specified.
The idea with ESCs is that they are undifferentiated, so you can train them to become any type of cell in the human body. Typically, though, the problem with ESCs is that they are so undifferentiated that they are hard to control and often end up forming cancerous tumors. Fox and Brooks never said exactly what the problem with ESCs for parkinson’s was, just that there were “some challenges” getting a “therapeutic benefit” after putting ESC derived dopamine neurons into the brain. They also never condemned the practice of ESCR or said that it would never work (in fact it’s something they continue to support and look into). It just hasn’t been showing the promise they hoped it would thus far, they say, and they’re focusing more on other options that will produce good results sooner.
It was all, I think, very carefully worded so as not to completely discredit the research they’ve promoted so heavily for so long. Nevertheless, I appreciate Fox’s honesty about the future of ESCs treating his own disease and I hope that someday he will also come to see the humanity of the tiny human beings sacrificed for this research and that, besides being ineffective, it is also unethical and immoral.
I realize this story is several weeks old by now (it came out when I was right in the middle of a major move – which I still am a little bit!), but I still wanted to comment on it because it was celebrity “patient advocates” for ESCR like Michael J. Fox that made me want to start blogging here in the first place. My hope being to at least let a small scale of the general public know that not all people with disabilities accept the creation, use and destruction of innocent human life for our own comfort and that the quality of our lives is not dependent on what we can and cannot do.
I started this blog in 2006 when we were fighting a ballot initiative to make human cloning ESCR a constitutional right in the state of Missouri. Ads supporting the initiative were dominated by people with all kinds of diseases and disabilities, including Fox, himself, and too many people were persuaded by this kind of emotional manipulation. I didn’t want people to look at me and think I supported such barbarity. Hard to believe it’s been almost six years…and I’m still here! In the end, we lost the battle against Amendment 2, but just barely. Amazing when you consider the massive amount of money that was by cloning supporters and how cleverly they tried to manipulate the public with bogus science and heartbreaking stories of people who would never walk again. Turns out there’s just no substitute for the truth.
Life in a Wheelchair is Not as Awful as You Might Think
Last night, the Sundance Channel premiered Push Girls, a new reality series about four women in wheelchairs. All of them have spinal cord injuries at various levels, three from car accidents, one from a ruptured blood clot in her spinal cord.
I watched the first episode online here yesterday afternoon.
I wouldn’t exactly call it family-friendly television – maybe it will get better, but as for the first episode, one of the girls talks openly about an on-again-off-again sexual relationship (yes, we can still have sex and get pregnant) she’s in with a man and then the cameras follow her to a club on a date with another woman – but I’m excited about this series, nonetheless.
It’s great not because it shows the challenges that those of us in wheelchairs face, but for showing what we’re still capable of and how life can still be enjoyed post-injury.
Personally, my injury has been a major lesson in patience and humility on many different levels. I talk a lot about life with a disability, often in terms of accepting suffering and physical weakness, but what I’ve really come to find after nearly 13 years in a wheelchair is that often the hardest part about living with a disability is not coming to terms with what I can’t do, but dealing with the perception that I am more helpless than I really am.
I’m not too proud to ask for help when I 
need it, but it can be a little embarrassing when people go out of their way to try to help or do things for me that I can easily do myself (especially when they see me getting in and out of my car). Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the generosity and I’m happy to know there are so many people willing to help others, but, having so many limitations as it is, I like to do the things that I still can do for myself, especially when I’m around someone who is not familiar with me and my situation.
Besides all of that, there are the hard-to-ignore sympathetic looks and pats on the back from passers-by and the surprised reaction I frequently get from people who can’t believe that I could have such a positive attitude about my life.
It’s not hard to imagine what they are thinking. We’ve come a long way in helping people with disabilities become more active and involved in our communities and work-forces, but it seems we have not yet relieved the general assumption that life with a disability is unbearable or less fulfilling. In fact, 52% of the people in our country admit that that they would rather be dead than disabled.
None of this is to say that life with a disability is easy, but then, whose life is, really? We all face challenges, some are bigger than others, but it’s not always as bad as it seems. As the saintly genius, Fr. Richard Neuhaus once said, “as long as we are alive, we have all the life there is.”
New episodes of Push Girls air on the Sundance Channel every Monday at 10 pm, EST. with re-runs throughout the week. See schedule here. You can watch the first episode and other clips online at Hulu.com.
I like what Mia said in this appearance on the Ellen Show:
We’re all looking for a lot of cures in this world and the one cool thing is, there is a cure for ignorance. It’s out there. We have it. And it’s awareness.
I applaud the Sundance Channel for putting this show out there. It’s such a refreshing change from how life with a disability has been shown in popular entertainment lately (ahem, Million Dollar Baby). With embryonic stem cell research still out there and assisted suicide on the rise for the sick and disabled, I hope it will make at least some small difference.
Related posts:
Most Paralyzed People are Happy to be Alive
Daniel James Needed Help to Live
I Enjoyed Every Minute of It!
Disabled People Are “Sexy,” Too!
Surprise! People With Disabilities Can Have Babies and Be Good Parents
The Task of Life
As Long As We Are Alive, We Have All the Life There Is
Refusing to Suffer is Refusing to Live
I Cloned My Pet Part II and “The Clone Song”
In January, TLC ran what amounted to an hour-long infomercial for the dog cloning industry called “I Cloned My Pet”. Apparently, they did it again with “I Cloned My Pet 2” last week. I didn’t watch it, but John Woestendiek suffered through it and had a few words to say about it:
I was going to stay silent and let “I Cloned My Pet 2″ pass peacefully in the night.
But I just can’t.
Part two of the program, which aired Monday on TLC, followed two potential dog cloning customers and recounted the experiences of a Florida couple who were among the first to get their dog cloned.
All in all, it was, like the first installment, another quasi-documentary that avoided the harsh realities of dog cloning — at least when it comes to all the dogs used in the process of cloning just one.
Instead, reality show style, it reconfirmed how wacky people can get, especially when it comes to their pets, and the lengths they will go to get what they think, or at least let themselves believe, is a live version of their dead dog.
Read the rest of John’s post for more details of the show, rational arguments against pet cloning and a song that a Beverly Hills cosmetic surgeon (in pic above) wrote about cloning his chihuahua.
The world is getting creepier by the minute. As I said before: Science Fiction is Not So Fictional Anymore – even when it comes to cloning humans…
Careers vs. Baby-Making
MJ makes some great points here (h/t Julie):
“If you’re not a bulldog about your career and that’s not your thing, it’s almost like you’re marginalized.” I hear that. Reminds me of this old post from Jenny Uebbing recounting a conversation she had with a friend of hers on why she, a smart, well educated young woman, could possibly want to be someone’s housewife (which she now is).
In Memoriam, 2012
The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. –Douglas MacArthur
Image: Incidents of the war. A harvest of death, Gettysburg, July, 1863
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (Jn. 15:13)
For all those who have lost loved ones in battle I pray, in the words of Abraham Lincoln:
that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
For our fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines past and present, known and unknown (including military chaplains); for those who died in battle and for the many veterans and other service men and women we have lost over the years:
Eternal rest, grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.
Amen.
Faces of the Fallen – an up to date list of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan
RIP Darin Thomas Settle
Adopt a Platoon
An Honest, Tender, Personal Moment from Our Vice President
Speaking to the survivors of fallen U.S. military service members today at the 18th annual TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Va., Joe Biden opened up about the intense grief and anger he experienced after after his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident almost 40 years ago. It’s an honest, tender and deeply personal moment from our Vice President that I hope we can all appreciate, regardless of our politics.
Personally, I thought it was very brave and touching of him to try to help those who are grieving by opening up and sharing his own grief with them a little bit (turn up the volume and lean in close to your speakers – I can’t find a louder copy of this video anywhere):
Requiescat in Pace Neilia and Naomi Biden and all of our fallen soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, past and present, known and unknown (including military chaplains).
To Finish, We Must Start
To finish things you have to start them.
—It seems a truism. But you so often lack that simple decision! And… how satan rejoices in your ineffectiveness!
-St. Josemaria Escriva, Furrow #492
Getting started is always the hardest part about writing for me. St. Francis De Sales, pray for us! St. Expeditus (patron saint of procrastinators) pray for us!
I’m a Floridian!! And Moving is a LOT of Work!
Not that I thought this was going to be a piece of cake, but, wow. I was not planning on taking an entire week off blogging, but I just haven’t had much time to sit down long enough to do any significant writing or even a short blog post in the past week. I arrived safely in Florida last Wednesday night and, even though the moving truck with the majority of our belongings did not get here until yesterday, we’ve managed to stay pretty busy settling in and setting up the little amount of stuff we were able to bring along with us. Then, when we weren’t busy working on house stuff, I was spending time with my middle sister who came down to help us out since it will probably be a pretty long time before I see her or my other sister again now that we live in different states. We managed to make it to the beach twice for a little bit.
As long and difficult as the process has been, it’s all worth it to be able to officially call myself a Floridian once again! We’re in northwest Florida, though, practically on the Alabama border, so we are surrounded by Bama fans in our neighborhood. It’s gonna be an interesting football season! GO GATORS!! –,==,< There's still a LOT of work to do unpacking everything that finally got delivered, but I hope to start easing back into regular blog mode this week. I hope some of you are still with me!
