Disability Care

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community.

What is intimacy? More than sex, more than romantic love, the pieces in this stunning and illuminating new anthology offer broader and more inclusive definitions of what it can mean to be intimate with another person. Explorations of caregiving, community, access, and friendship offer us alternative ways of thinking about the connections we form with others—a vital reimagining in an era when forced physical distance is at times a necessary norm.

Just Care is Akemi Nishida’s thoughtful examination of care injustice and social justice enabled through care. The current neoliberal political economy has turned care into a business opportunity for the healthcare industrial complex and a mechanism of social oppression and control. Nishida analyzes the challenges people negotiate whether they are situated as caregivers, receivers, or both. Also illuminated is how people with disabilities come together to assemble community care collectives and bed activism (resistance and visions emerging from the space of bed) to reimagine care as a key element for social change.

First came the boom - the loud, deep, unapologetic bellow that seemed to erupt from the very core of the Earth. Eerily, the majestic high-rise slowly leaned to the south. On the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, no alarms sounded, and no one had information about what had happened at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Blind since birth, Michael couldn't see a thing, but he could hear the sounds of shattering glass, falling debris, and terrified people flooding around him and his guide dog, Roselle.

Behind our current caregiving crisis, in which a broken system has left parents and caregivers exhausted, sits a fierce addiction to independence. But what would happen if we started to appreciate dependency, and the deep meaning of one person caring for another? If we start to care about care? With a curiosity and desire to understand more fully one of humanity’s most profound and essential relationships, journalist Elissa Strauss she interrogates our societal obsession with going it alone and poses a challenge to let ourselves be transformed by the act of caregiving.

The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age 24 by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was "too disabled". Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life.

In this collection of beautiful and raw essays, Amy S. F. Lutz writes openly about her experience - the positive and the negative - as a mother of a now 21-year-old son with severe autism. Lutz's human emotion drives through each moment and challenges commonly held ideas that define autism either as a disease or as neurodiversity.

Mara Tagarelli is, professionally, the head of a multimillion-dollar AIDS foundation; personally, she is a committed martial artist. But her life has turned inside out like a sock. She can’t rely on family, her body is letting her down, and friends and colleagues are turning away - they treat her like a victim. She needs to break that narrative: build her own community, learn new strengths, and fight. But what do you do when you find out that the story you’ve been told, the story you’ve told yourself, is not true?

The success of food allergy activism in highlighting the dangers of foodborne allergens shows how illness communities can effectively advocate for the needs of their members. In Food Allergy Advocacy, Danya Glabau follows parents and activists as they fight for allergen-free environments, accurate labeling, the fair application of disability law, and access to life-saving medications for food-allergic children in the United States.

A sudden rise in opioid addicts coinciding with a sudden drop in legally available opioids, created a desperation for prescription drugs never seen before in this country. Physicians shut down their previous practice of repeated refills, once the death toll was too high to ignore. As hospitals and rehab facilities instituted drug testing and CORI checks to ensure employees were clean, one health-care option stood alone as a place to easily obtain painkillers. That place was home health care.

With Mental Health, Inc., award-winning investigative journalist Art Levine delivers a Shock Doctrine-style exposé of the failures of our out-of-control, profits-driven mental health system, with a special emphasis on the failures of the pharmaceuticals industry, including the treatment of children with antipsychotics and disastrous PTSD protocols for veterans.

What do you do when you find out that your child has special needs? Nothing prepares you for the shock of receiving a negative diagnosis for your child. The emotional rollercoaster that comes with it can leave you feeling lost and confused. You are suddenly thrown into a different world, grappling with trying to understand your child’s condition and how to care for them.

The way our lives are today, it’s only natural we all face some stress and anxiety. But when this panic becomes overwhelming and prevents you from living your life, then it’s time to take action and manage your anxiety! With this unique guide, you can learn everything about anxiety and relevant disorders so you can control your emotions and lead a peaceful life.

This is both an assessment tool and an aid to probe into your dog's brain to see whether they may suffer from a cognitive impairment. This also provides some potential modifications surrounding how you can aid your canine companion.