TSA IS Targeting Those With Prostheses and Medical Devices

If you flew in early October, you weren’t subject to the enhanced search techniques. Now as a person with a medical device, you might as well refuse the back-scatter x-ray because they are going to want to get into your pants anyway. They are targeting women and folks with prosthetic and medical devices.

The teacher deserved privacy, no doubt about that. What a humiliating experience. If I have a pat down, I want it in full view of witnesses. Being in a room with one or two TSA goons sounds worse.

Don’t pass up a pump just because of the TSA!!! There are so many advantages to a pump and it is SO worth the time and money! I really love being able to bolus in fractions of units, and to be able to easily take more insulin during a meal if I need to, and I’m having fewer lows because of the ability to use different basals according to the time of day. I never need to worry about not having my insulin if I’m invited to go out to eat with friends (unless I need to refill my reservoir, and I am pretty conscientious about that). I love that the pump calculates how much insulin to take if I tell it how many carbs I’m going to eat, and I especially like that it won’t let me “pile up” insulin in an attempt to correct a high, so I don’t get lows from too much insulin.

Flying is a pain in the butt, but it would be so whether or not you have a pump!

Natalie ._c-

That’s sad. The last time I rode Greyhound was 2008 after a horrible experience at the Chicago airport. I won’t go into the problems I had at the airport; suffice it to say it was a bad situation. The Greyhound people were kind enough to give me a voucher for their “food court” when my blood sugar was dropping like a rock, their atm and credit machines were not working, and I had no cash. The driver promised to watch out for me, and he did, even when we got to my destination and he had to keep moving. Oh, the driver was a former flight attendant – a very good one, since he did the NYC to Paris run – but left when he found the airline regulations intolerable. He found driving a bus to be more fulfilling since he could actually treat passengers with a modicum of dignity.

Well stated, Judith.



We’ve become sheep willing to submit to anything as each shred of civil rights is stripped away. Patriot Act, anyone? I was deeply ashamed that was enacted with barely a whimper of complaint. Surveillance cameras everywhere in our daily lives. So ubiquitous that no one even notices. I live in a small, rural poor area with a very low crime rate. There are cameras posted on traffic lights, outside stores, in parking lots. Does being under the ever watchful eye make me feel safer? No, quite the opposite.



I shudder thinking how much radiation is emitted from TSA scanners. Guess if they say they’re safe enough times, the sheep will believe it.

There was someone here who went through the advaced screening right after they were implimented, and they swabbed the insulin vials (the rubber part where you insert the syringe).



My medical (chemical) questions (that probably no TSA agent could readily answer) are:

  1. What substance do they use to “swab” the insulin vials?
  2. Does that material break down the rubber on the top of the vials?
  3. If you wipe the rubber top with an alcohol swab, will that react with the rubber?
  4. Would they just let you insert a syringe, shoot it somewhere, like even in your hand, and then swab that?



    My other question is “If I had an 8 year old daughter and a TSA agent ‘searched’ inside her underwear, how pissed would I be?”.

Funny because when you go to a concert of whereever they sometimes pat you down - the males guards won’t even go near the females that enter the gates - always plenty of girls there to pat you down. That said, I would rather have a female anyday. If they let guys do the girls, can you imagine the applications that would come pouring in? I don’t want some creepy dude checkin out my bod.

Not enough female agents? Wait, we have an unemployment rate of almost 10%. Geez, I don’t believe that.

I have taken the MegaBus in the past few years and no one searched me than. It only goes to certain places though but it is expanding. It is nice and clean and cheap too.

Pretty soon they will be searching you to get on the EL or City bus. Geez.

Honestly, I am sort of in agreement with what someone posted a page ago. I think they are more considered with expensive things like planes blowing up than any of us dying. It is all about money.

I agree. I had a family vacation planned for Oct 2001. I refused to cancel it. As far as I am concerned, if I let some terrorist disrupt my life through fear, then they have won. We went on that vacation. My kids understood the situation and if I was not afraid, then neither were they.

The idea that we would give up our hard fought freedoms so readily is really disappointing. I put up with airport security, but I think it is totally stupid.

i think the next time i hear someone whine about being discriminated against for being D i’m going to remind them of the homophobic and racist remarks on this thread…all coming from people with D.

so disappointing.

I didn’t know what “O M A” stood for at all - I thought it had something to do with the airlines! Thanks JT. Even if it was O M G - I probably wouldn’t have gotten it right away because I am used to seeing it as OMG! (like on Yahoo).

Ducks post and pic were meant to be a joking I am sure.

This is scarey because if they go in our underwear - what is next? A “V” search? or an “A” search (for girls and guys)? Gross as it may sound - hey, someone could invent something so small to stick up their and if you are one of those suicide bombers (which I personally don’t understand - it takes a pretty messed up person to want to be one of the those) - you would do it.

I read somewhere that they are now using animals as suicide bombers - I wonder if you board with Fido or Fluffy where they will check the collar?

I had the same thought, Kim! Some terrorist sticks something up his rear & we’ll be subjected to cavity searches.

Flew yesterday and last week through O’Hare and Tucson. No problems with Navi CGM (visible on my arm) or Omnipod (not visible as it was on my stomach). Receiver and PDM are left in my bag going through belt screener.
Flew first week of Nov (O’Hare, Greenville, and Pittsburgh) and one of them inspected my insulin, POD, CGM with the light on my hands thingy and, aside from it taking a few minutes, no problems. I understand how our rights are impacted, however the reasons the TSA is giving us is to help keep us safe.
All the protests are going to do is make people frustrated and late. The proper way to handle this is through communication with your elected local gov’t representatives

Totally!



Or my next thought was since clothes and shoes seem to be an issue, it would be easier to just show up to the airport naked and buy all your clothes when you get to your destination. Ha! I can just see the money the airports would make off of that - there would be entire malls after the checkpoint - not to mention all the peepers! hehe. :slight_smile:



I hated it when they started that whole 'take off your shoes" thing but now it seems like nothing. Esp. in the winter, if you live in cold area with snow, are you going to be wearing flip-flops to the airport? No! I remember once the checkin lady was saying “You should wear shoes that are easy to take off.” I had my thick laceup winter boots on. It was freezing out. Sorry, no I would like to keep my toes. I am not going to wear non-winter shoes just to go to the airport so taking off my boots at the checkpoint doesn’t make your checkin line fall behide. I started grumbling about it and my bf was like “Be quiet or they will arrest you.” Gimme a break. I paid for my ticket - and it is so much hassle to get on a plane now, it isn’t even worth it anymore. Travel is exhausting enough but I am exhausted just after going through the checkpoint. I want to go home after that! Too tired to get on the plane.



Someone called me about a job that was in another state recently and I was interested in it but I would have to move and said no. They said commuting by plane was an option (live their 4 days, come back for weekends) and because the hassles of flying I said no to that too. Just thinking about it made me exhausted! The days of fun flying are over. I used to love to go to the airport. Hate it now.



Funny, you can’t walk around without shoes on, you can’t go on a plane with out shoes on but you have to have them taken off to be scanned. Well, someone could have something in their implanted in their shoes and walk into an important building and still blow it up - you don’t need an airplane to do that.

Did you have to go through a full body scan?

I’ll be flying in late December and I wear an Omnipod. Like someone mentioned earlier, it would be silly to go through the full body scan, only to have them see the pod and put me through an intensive pat down as well. I’d just as soon tell them I have the pod and avoid the full body scan at least.

If someone hides something in their hair, shaving heads will be mandatory. We’ll be bald & naked. There will be a changing room to deposit clothing. They’ll hand us scrubs to put on, or maybe raincoats so we can flash TSA workers to get through checks for our own “security.” All that’s missing are orange jumpsuits for us to be official prisoners.

Been through the same thing with boots in winter.

Agree, it’s not worth it to pay for the honor of being squished like sardines in a plane & treated as criminal & patted down by perverts. My family’s planning a trip to Europe this summer to include my nephews. We’re seriously rethinking that idea.

Enough is enough!

If you happen to be traveling with another person, you have the right to have your traveling companion WITH YOU when you are patted-down/taken for a secondary screening.

Timothy McVeigh was a Muslim? The guy who flew his plane into the IRS offices in Texas was a Muslim? The people bombing abortion clinics are Muslim?

Who knew?

Terry