TSA Search Humiliates Leukemia Patient

Last year, TSA searched a 95-year-old woman in a wheelchair wearing an adult diaper, which the agents confiscated, leaving her without protection for her journey to Michigan.  At least they took her to a private screening room to conduct the screening.

Not so for Michelle Dunaj, who was traveling back to Michigan after a vacation in Hawaii and a visit with friends in the Seattle area.  She is in the end stage of leukemia, so she believes this will be the last trip she'll ever take. 


TSA tainted what would otherwise been a wonderful memory by denying her request for a private screening, instead forcing her to endure a female agent making her lift her shirt after feeling tubes in her chest and abdomen.  That might have been understandable if Dunaj hadn't called the airline ahead of time and carried documentation for her feeding tubes and prescriptions for all of her medications and her five bags of saline solution.  During the full patdown in view of other passengers, another agent punctured one of the saline solution bags, rendering it unusable.

Worse yet, the TSA defends its actions.  A TSA spokeswoman said that the agency had reviewed video from the security checkpoint where Michelle Dunaj was screened for weapons and determined that the agency's  were followed.  Wake up TSA!  If your procedures allow for such rudeness to a dying person, you need to change your procuedures!  No defense for such transgression exists.  It was a shameful act of total insensitivity, and the screeners involved should be summarily dismissed.

These violations occur because leadership has not trained agenst thorougly in the handling of ill, disabled, and special needs passengers.  John Pistole, who heads TSA, has been grilled by Congress and should be removed.  He has not adequately addressed the kind of nonsense that occus in the screening process.  Screeners should be trained to focus on behavior and not expose the sick, the very young, and the infirm to publc patdowns.

Ham on Wry cringes at the thought of a person who has only a few months to live being subjected to such inhumane treatment at the hands of insensitive morons.  John Pistole should write Michelle Dunaj a personal letter of apology and give her lifetime immunity to screening, in case she has time for another trip on her bucket list.