"Fearrogance in the Vegetable Patch".

As a young doctor's wife I frequently heard my then-husband and his pals discuss "The Vegetable Patch" - - that part of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where the comatose and the neurologically damaged were treated.

I cringed inwardly every time they would refer to their patients as "The Turnip," "The Carrot," and "The Eggplant," but I kept it inside. Only a few months after one such party, I wished I had broken the omerta rule (remember The Godfather?). I suddenly awoke to find myself in the same position as those labeled ICU patients.

I learned in the mid-1980s that my medical circle's callous disregard for their patient's humanity (and then my own) was really an extreme form of what I now call the common "Fearrogance" of living with a disability.

My new word combines the Arrogance of believing one will never be disabled with the Fear that it could actually happen to them someday.

How else to explain how the Hemlock Society (with its new euphemistic name, "End of Life Choices") and the ACLU label all people concerned about Terri's Schindler-Schiavo's civil rights as the "fringe element"? The members of such elitist groups (which I belonged to before the onset of my disability) need to believe that Terri's and my experience is rare and will never happen to anyone they know.

But it isn't rare and it can happen - - to you or someone you know. What people don't realize is that there are more people with disabilities in America than the entire population of Canada. Genetics, accident, injury, and the normal aging process will push most of us into the disabled community before the end of our natural lives.

That rampant "Fearrogance" is why my experience is such an important yet missing piece in the debate over Terri Schindler-Schiavo's "right" to be killed for her "crime" of having a disability.