"I won't be happy until I lose my legs"
- 29 Jan 07, 1:25 PM
There's a in today's edition of The Guardian. Susan Smith (not her real name) has Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID). She was six years old when she first became aware of her desire to lose her legs, and by the time she was a teenager she was "playing" at being an amputee. More recently, she took drastic action to freeze her left leg using dry ice pellets, in order to kill the nerves and persuade doctors to amputate. The first attempt failed, but a second was "successful", and last June Susan had her left leg amputated just above the knee. She is now planning for the removal of her right leg.
Your thoughts on this article, as ever, would be welcomed in the comments.
Comments
Dear CM,
I've lost a leg to cancer. That was 22 years ago.
I don't see anything /too/ disturbing in this article, though I admit it is very difficult to understand her, trying to get rid of her leg. Likewise, it is not easy to me to understand people who are gay or like country & western, but hey: let all bloom.
I am perfectly happy and comfortable having just one leg. Maybe I've been lucky down the road but life is good just the way it is and, in that sense, I'm actually /glad/ about everything that has happened, even about my disability & health issues. Using a prosthetic and all the physical and social hassle implied gets to me occasionally, but, to make a point, there is /nothing/ wrong in less than three limbs. If someone wants to join the club then there you go.
I can appreciate that there are people who might get all worked up about someone wanting to do something like this, but there always are.
Cheers,
Mika.
My first thoughts are stupid, irresponsible, selfish cow. Then I considered that it is a mental health condition that she has, clearly a terrible one. But I wonder if it will be like the other body ones, where the person gets what they want & STILL doesn't like themselves. How is she going to be when she wants her legs back? Who's paid for all the treatment, equipment & support she will need/has? Will she get DLA for now being an amputee? The 'real' disabled need help & most of us don't get it. She needs serious mental health help & she needs it now. But she's still a stupid irresponsible utterly selfish cow. I pity her poor children.
All I can do is cringe in horror at that. I wonder, they have transplanted hands from one body to another, could they do the same with her remaining leg? I'll wager there are folks out there who would LOVE to have a perfectly good leg.
This is what happens when a mental condition gets treated as a physical condition - "sufferers" end up mutilating themselves. I can't see why she can't be taught to live with BIIDs, instead of actually getting to this stage. Does it really matter if she can't relate to her legs? Can't she just live with that, instead of removing them and deliberately causing problems for those who love her?
why all the cringing, we read the first two