Every Day and Everyday Gratitude: On Becoming a Cyborg

Aleah Butler thesis artwork

Artist Aleah Hartke Butler

"Autoethnography is still considered a new way of research. It allows emotion, recognizing that the researcher, the one telling the story, cannot present only scientific fact, devoid of feelings," said our daughter as she spoke to a crowd of college students and professors about her master's degree thesis: Self Portrait: an illustrated autoethnography about chronic illness and disability.

Professional, but a bit nervous, she spoke of her almost five years of chronic illness and pain.

"Most research is from the viewpoint of people in the medical field or by family members. Very few stories are written from the sick person's point of view."

She flipped through her thesis and shared an entry of one such view:

On becoming a Cyborg by our daughter

Cyborg painting

I see new articles all the time about why everything is bad for us from food to cell phones to travel to technology,

People are afraid of change but more afraid of disability or death (some even think those are the same).

But every night I plug myself into a machine that forces me to breathe to stay alive.

For when my body falls too far into sleep I just stop breathing.

Here I am, a minor type of cyborg, using machines to live. And in the morning, I take my many pills

And I leave the house with my cane, my walker, or my wheelchair.

All technology I need, depending on the failures of my body that day. I look forward to the day when science can replace my digestive system with a robotic one that runs smoothly and without pain.

Some people want to return to a day of only man and nature, but I can’t live then. I, for one, welcome our future.

When I can be the same as you, but better because I’ll also be a robot.