Taking the last trip of her life turned out to be less of a vacation and more of a hindrance for Michelle Dunaj, a 34-year-old woman with leukemia. She underwent a difficult time with the Transportation Security Association in the Seattle airport on her way to Hawaii with friends and family.
According to Dunaj, as she passed through security at the Seattle-Tacoma airport on Oct. 2, she was required to remove her bandages after being patted down by a female agent who felt tubes going into her chest and abdomen. When Dunaj was told to remove her bandages, a painful request both physically and emotionally, she did not refuse but instead just requested a private room to do so. Her request was not only denied, but ignored. “My issue is that it was in front of everyone, and everyone was looking at me like I was a criminal or like I was doing something wrong,” she said, according to The Huffington Post. TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis told KOMO-TV, “It’s against policy to deny a private screening for passengers who request it. The agency is looking into the incident.”
Along with being forced to expose her body to onlookers, Dunaj also claims that when the saline solution she was carrying wasn’t recognized by the scanner, an agent punctured one of the bags to get a sample, ruining it in its entirety, according to The Seattle Times. These are things she brought with her to survive. She did not have the option of leaving them at home and avoiding this hassle. Dunaj called Seattle-Tacoma airport ahead of time, asking for a wheelchair and alerting them to her condition and appearance in an attempt to reduce stress when she arrived at security, but to no avail. She was carrying documentation for her tubes, and prescriptions for her medications including the five bags of saline solution, clearly being prepared to encounter a need for proof for these items that are necessary for her survival. Dunaj warned the TSA agents that these tubes would be present and provided documentation of what they were, but was still forced to lift her bandages up for everyone to see, causing her much suffering. These items are necessary for her to live, and she took necessary precautions well beforehand to inform TSA of the situation and make it easier, but it was all in vain.
According to The Seattle Times, the TSA agency has looked at video footage of the event at Seattle-Tacoma airport and released a statement saying, “At no point did a TSA officer open the passenger’s medically necessary liquids and the passenger was never asked to remove or pull off any bandages.” It seems they not only violated this dying woman’s right of asking for a private room to oblige demands to remove bandages, but are now calling her a liar. I do not see any reason as to why she would lie about this with so many witnesses to the events that she claims took place that day. If all she wanted was a pleasant vacation with friends and family to Hawaii for her last dying wish, then I see no logical explanation as to why TSA claims she made up this story which has caused more stress on her life and health than her illness already has.
To top it all off, after being obedient and doing everything she was told in her inspection without protest, Dunaj claims she was asked to “move along, as if she was holding up the line,” according to Press TV. Dunaj can be seen in her interview with KOMO-TV undergoing emotional pain, breaking out in tears mid-sentence just reminiscing about the incident.
According to the official website of TSA, “Our current policies and procedures focus on ensuring that all passengers, regardless of their personal situations and needs, are treated equally and with the dignity, respect and courtesy they deserve.” Taylor Shaffer, a TSA agent at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. said, “For no reason should the bandages have come off. If she in fact was asked to remove them, then the agents at SEA-TAC were not following protocol.”
This is far from the standard of respect that employees of the United States of America are expected to uphold with any civilian, especially a woman suffering from leukemia who was just trying to enjoy her last wish. TSA agents need to be better managed by their superiors and learn to control their level of respect to the suffering and non-suffering alike.
Avery Twible can be reached at avery.twible@spartans.ut.edu