In the reading Disability by Nancy Mairs, author talks about the american society and her life struggle with multiple sclerosis. Mairs starts her essay, by describing herself as a crippled woman, and her reaction about the media and people with disability. She speaks about her conditions and states how she never noticed a cripple woman like her in the media. Not even for advertisement of products. Mair writes that “I once asked a local advertiser why he didn’t include disabled people in his spots.…
Peggy is a 62-year-old female who suffers from multiple sclerosis (G35), along with hypertension, carpal tunnel syndrome, depression, polyosteoarthritis, overactive bladder, and cervicalgia. Her symptoms include difficulty with balance, coordination, gait, numbness/tingling and left foot drop. She uses a cane due to her limping gait. Peggy has tried and failed various treatments including aubagio. Peggy’s symptoms are getting worse, as she is experiencing numbness in both legs that is climbing up to her thighs and buttocks, falling more frequently and has more aches and pains, as her recent MRI shows her disease is progressing.…
Life can change at any moment for which we have little control over. In the essay “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs, she expresses her thoughts on having Multiple Sclerosis and how it significantly changed her life. She provides the reader with various sad and personal stories which would make one’s life miserable. However, when addressing her condition and its effect on her life, she keeps a calm and positive tone. One cannot control what happens in life, but it is possible to control one’s attitude towards it.…
“On Being a Cripple” is about a lady who has undergone severe changes in her life, and now has to live life as a “cripple.” When one becomes “different”, they are immediately labeled and their lives are changed forever. The main message of this powerful essay is to show others what it’s like to be a cripple, both in public and behind closed doors.…
Multiple Sclerosis and the EAE model Background: Multiple sclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the CNS (brain and spinal cord). MS attacks the myelinated axons in the CNS, causing adverse effects in motor and autonomic function. The four major categories of MS are relapsing-remitting MS, secondary progressive MS, primary progressive MS, and progressive-relapsing MS but the course of the disease remains very unpredictable. Although tests to diagnose MS do not exist, studies have shown that genetic and environmental factors may have a substantial effect in the incidence of MS. For example, the incidence rate of MS is twice as high for women compared to men and significantly higher in people with a Northern European.…
Rhetorical Analysis “Disability and the Media: Prescriptions for Change” In the media, there is a controversy on how the media portrays a person with a disability. Charles A. Riley II, article has a pointed view on how the media acts, and how they need to change their ways on viewing the world of disability. Riley writes this article to get his point across to the world that the media needs to be changed.…
When she went to media and watch television, she never saw a woman who also have sclerosis like her on media and television. She went to ask a local advertiser why didn’t he include disabled people in his spots. And he answer that because they don’t want someone who have disabled, it will ride the product that they selling. Maris said “ In extreme, you might feel as though you don’t exist, in any meaningful social sense” (218).…
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson was a key figure in feminist disability studies. Within the critical framework of feminist disability studies, disability becomes a representational system rather than a medical problem; meaning that whoever has a disability or was seen as different did not represent what was considered beautiful throughout our society. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson wrote an article titled “Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept”, which has many strengths and weaknesses. Her essay makes three arguments: “the concept of misfit emphasizes the particularity of varying lived embodiments and avoids a theoretical generic disabled body; the concept of misfit clarifies the current feminist critical conversation about universal vulnerability…
In the recent past, societies have neglected persons with disabilities. Nonetheless, families and communities are slowly internalizing ways and means of assisting the disabled persons to lead a normal life. For example, policies designed to ensure that public and private institutions have facilities that can facilitate movement of physically handicapped has reduced the levels of stigmatization from the healthy…
Nancy Mairs, in her nonfiction essay, “On Being a Cripple,” (1986) coveys her perpetual struggle in “getting the hang of” her debilitating condition—Multiple Sclerosis. Though her view of her condition is turbulent, Mairs acknowledges one constant truth—that she is plainly a “cripple”. Mairs’ utilization of this motif “squarely” elucidates survival amongst inexorable forces. Mairs’ purpose is to identify and generalize her condition in order to express the complexity of its duality, ultimately to explicate acceptance in stark contrast to episodic dejection. In doing so, Mairs exemplifies strengthened command over her “crippleness” and proves that she is not defined by her illness.…
Multiple Sclerosis in itself is considered a secret. This disease has no one condition, and it varies among people. MS has no cure or cause for sure.1 The symptoms are very different, and it could become serious or less serious, it could come for once and never come again. For these reasons, diagnosing Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is not straightforward, however, there are several tests that could determine whether you have it or not.…
Multiple sclerosis (MS) affects about 2.3 million people from around the world and women are affected by it by about two times more than men. For characteristics, MS has three different phenotypic subtypes; progressive relapsing MS, secondary progressive MS, and primary progressive MS. The causes of multiple sclerosis are uncertain, but it is considered an autoimmune disease. An autoimmune disease is where the immune system attacks its own tissue. MS is thought to be responsible for environmental factors and genetics.…
Multiple Sclerosis is a chronic, progressive, degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. This disorder usually affects young adults between the ages of 20 and 40. Multiple frequency of occurrence is rare, .1% currently afflicts about 400,000 in the United States and 1 million worldwide. The cause of multiple sclerosis is unknown, but it is likely that multiple factors act in concert to trigger or perpetuate the disease.…
Multiple Sclerosis, also known as MS, is an autoimmune disease that primarily affects the central nervous system, which consists of the optic nerve, the brain, and the spinal cord. If you break down the term, multiple means many and sclerosis means scar tissue, ergo many scar tissues. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, “it is uncertain exactly how many people have MS. It is believed there are currently 250,000 to 350,000 people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the United States. This indicates that there are roughly 200 new cases diagnosed each week”.…
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an idiopathic autoimmune disorder that affects the nervous system. MS results from progressive demyelination of the white matter of the brain and spinal chord. Multiple sclerosis affects the nervous system by damaging the nerve cell’s myelin, a process known as demyelination. Multiple sclerosis causes scattered demyelinated lesions causing neurologic dysfunction. The myelin is a lipoprotein complex formed of glial cells.…