Thread by @HodgsonWrites

My GP has phoned three times trying to make me sign a DNR due to covid because I "wouldn't be a priority"

Health is a privilege. Use it. You'll lose it in your lifetime. Disabled lives aren't worth less. Help us. Don't look away. Lives depend on it.

#MakeAbleistsUncomfortable

He definitely needs retraining on these conversations. I have a life limiting illness, but am by no means at deaths door (have at least another decade in me yet according to experts). My worry is that the pandemic has stripped nuance - I also have a

disabled neighbour who has had the same conversation with the same doctor. It appears the policy is - is this person ill? Yes? Well they need a DNR, when actually a living will would be more appropriate. I talk about my experiences with a living will here:

Right. I have muted this thread. Doctors don't get to decide my quality of life, I do. And it's pretty damn amazing. The DNR system needs to be reworked because it's inherently ableist - just like the frailty scores at the start of the pandemic. I am exhausted by the number

of people mansplaining this to me. I'm a palliative care patient, a writer whose theme is basically hospitals and death. I know my shit. I've spent years of my life inside hospitals and hospice. You won't change my mind that the system is ableist.

By no means is this every doctor I've come across. My god, some of them are the most incredible people I've ever met, but covid has excentuated an already ableist system, an already systemically underfunded area.

I am not afraid of death at all. (Hello, 22 and using a hospice)

but what I am afraid of is people getting to decide if my quality of life is worthwhile or not while never having lived it.
*END*

I documented one of my DNR conversations back in April in a poem. "The GP phoned this afternoon/ trying to talk about a DNR order. I refused,/ instead told him about the starlings mermurating/ and all the living I've got left to do"

Poem here: mmu.ac.uk/write/10th-apr…