TSA pat-down leaves bladder cancer survivor covered in urine

Courtesy Thomas Sawyer Thomas Sawyer, 61, said he was left "humiliated" and covered in urine after undergoing a TSA pat-down.

A retired special ed teacher, a bladder cancer survivor, who wears a urostomy bag, was utterly humiliated and broke down in tears, because he ended up soaked in his own urine after suffering through a traumatic TSA pat-down.

The bag collects his urine via an opening in his stomach.

This is what it’s come to. This is why you hear rumblings of the terrorists having won the idiotically named War on Terror(ism):

“I was absolutely humiliated, I couldn’t even speak,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich. [...]  “If the seal is broken, urine can leak all over my body and clothes.”

Of course, it goes without saying that the TSA team was polite, compassionate, sensitive, and apologetic for any inconvenience or embarrassment they caused:

Due to his medical condition, Sawyer asked to be screened in private. “One officer looked at another, rolled his eyes and said that they really didn’t have any place to take me,” said Sawyer.

After that, Sawyer convinced them– yes, he had to convince them– to take him into a private office. Wasn’t that compassionate, sensitive, and apologetic of them?

Because he wears pants two sizes too large (due to his medical equipment), once he took off his belt, his pants fell right down around his ankles.

And naturally, once the agents realized his distressing predicament and how self-conscious Sawyer must have felt, they treated him with the respect he deserved and handled the matter more delicately:

“I had to ask twice if it was OK to pull up my shorts,” said Sawyer, “And every time I tried to tell them about my medical condition, they said they didn’t need to know about that.” [...]

“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”  [...] They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”

So a very wet, very mortified, and very appalled Sawyer had to schlep through the airport soaked in his own urine, and remain that way until after the plane was in the air, at which time he could finally get inside a cramped bathroom to wash up.

If instilling a feeling of security and patriotism is important to the powers that be, it might be wise to consider the fact that Americans have feelings, and they also have medical conditions that don’t always fit neatly into the TSA’s feel-up-your-neighbor methods.

Some of us need more attention and care than others. And some of us may even begin to retaliate publicly and at the  polls.

“[I]f this country is going to sacrifice treating people like human beings in the name of safety, then we have already lost the war.”

Not to mention lost our dignity.

H/t: TexBetsy