How TSA Regulations Apply If You Are Disabled

Get ready for a dose of indignity if you have a disability and want to travel by airplane.

The new TSA regulations for disabled travelers-exposure to radiation and ridicule, or a public groping and in-depth interrogation on exactly how your catheter works are almost as crazy as US Airways throwing a frequent flier off the plane for being too disabled to fly.

Most people with spinal cord injuries have been given with enough radiation to last a lifetime, thank you very much. In any case, if you can't walk unaided and raise your hands above your head for seven seconds you've no choice; it's a groping session or you stay at home, thanks to TSA regulations.

If people without a disability think the TSA's new 'enhanced' pat-downs are intrusive (not to mention ticklish), imagine how tedious the process will be if you wear a catheter and leg bag, or have a colostomy bag, a feeding tube, or simply wear a diaper?

The folks at Open Doors Organization tell us that you'll soon be able to fill out an official card to discreetly let the TSA guy know about your disability without him having to find it for himself (literally). But having the opportunity to detail your most intimate health issues on a piece of paper to be handed around the back office is hardly reassuring.

The unexpected winners in this new security situation are those with artificial limbs, most of whom will be able to avoid the pat-down and walk straight through the full-body scanners. But you'll still be swabbed and sampled in case you've wired up your prosthetic limb to explode over New York, and you'll still have your tube of KY confiscated by officials who don't understand why you need it.

Perhaps the TSA assesses there's a major threat from a wheelchair-using wannabe martyr who conceals a bomb in his iron-coated diaper with the fuse running through a catheter tube into a leg-bag filled with explosive liquid detonated by a false pimple built into an artificial knee...