Messed up, death obsessed cripple

When I turn on the TV to distract myself from morbid thoughts, there's no escaping so called role models like Heather Mills skating around in Dancing on Ice, or the contestants on new BBC Three disability reality series Dancing on Wheels. Then of course there are
the current Affairs programmes, featuring an assortment of cripples arguing passionately for and against the right to die.

When I think about it, viewers might well be forgiven for believing that the only things disabled people want to do these days is dance or die. I don't want to do either. I'm strictly not into dancing and I'm definitely not encouraging death. In fact, I have the opposite problem: I'm so worried about dying that I've become a little obsessed about my health. And not in a good way.

I don't eat well, exercise or do whatever is necessary to be as healthy as I can be. No, instead I obsess that every little bodily sensation that is unfamiliar or unwanted could be the beginning of the end.

I'm not saying I'm a hypochondriac, but if I have tingles down my arm, I'm having a heart attack, a headache becomes a brain tumour and stomach pains must mean that I'm haemorridging. Years of watching Casualty, House and ER have made me into an enthusiastic, amateur doctor.

The internet has also helpfully contributed towards my informal medical education. All I have to do is log onto my favourite search engine, type in my symptoms and .0024 seconds later, I can have over 47,000,000 possible diagnoses and a whole new medical condition to worry about.

I can't be the only Google doctor out there? Surely most of us with access to the internet will be guilty of wanting an instantly gratifying dot com diagnosis at sometime or another? It's so easy to be informed about our health... and to jump to conclusions about it. When Dr Liz is let loose on her keyboard, the prognosis is usually terminal.

It was a relief to learn that I'm certainly not the only death obsessed crip. A disabled friend of mine recently told me that he is so scared the gimpy grim reaper will come to claim him during the night that he sleeps with the light and the radio on. This same friend is now 48 years old and the last remaining 'biffy'(*) from his class at special school.

Another friend who went to a segregated boarding school told me that when a pupil died, no one would ever talk about it. Instead they'd disappear into the night without even a mention the next day in Assembly.

What happens to some of us as disabled kids must surely come back to haunt us when we're older. At the age of 16, I was given a birthday card with the phrase, "it's not the years in your life but the life in your years". A lovely sentiment but a reminder of the fragility of mortality is not what you need to hear on the day you turn sweet sixteen. All I wanted was my ears pierced.

Once I became involved in the world of disability, however, I learnt the truth of that Hallmark philosophy all too well. I used to take part in protests for disability rights and, at every major demo, there would be a new t-shirt that we'd wear like a uniform. Printed on the sleeve would be a list of all the activists who had died since the previous event. We regularly lost so many friends and colleagues that some years the t-shirts had to be long sleeved.

I have no doubt that all these experiences and lessons have made me the messed up, death obsessed, health anxious cripple that I am. They've informed my neuroses, my humour and my cynicism. But, contrary to popular belief, I, as a disabled person, have had enough death to last me a lifetime. That's why, the next time I turn on my TV to hear people
debating a disabled person's right to die, I'll be one of the ones voting for the right to stick around.

(*) Biffy: (n.) (sl.) What Liz calls someone with Spina Bifida - Ed.