Reacting to the ‘Reluctant Survivor’

As a person who has had a severe disability since birth, I was horrified by your update on Elizabeth Bouvia.

“I’d rather be dead than live like this,” you quote her as saying. But you also say she “takes pride in small everyday triumphs. She has, for instance, mastered the telephone.” And: “She fantasizes about living . . . on her own.”

Why can’t she? She dismisses it because it “would cost too much,” yet you say the county currently spends $1,000 a day for her.

Believe me, independent living--with a full-time attendant, motorized wheelchair and other necessary assistive devices in an accessible apartment--would cost a lot less.

BEN MATTLIN, board member

Westside Center for Independent Living