Home Modifications and Ways of Living Well

People living with a disability or illness and health care professionals often have different perspectives on what needs to be done, and why, in order to create a life they can recognize as good. Focusing on home modifications, I explore the enactment of diverging perspectives on the desired good. I show how one couple living with the effects of motor neuron disease in Wales tried to create a way of living. Drawing from a narrative-based study, I explore what happens when there is an interaction of different perspectives of what is considered to be a desirable outcome. I argue that the construction of some expectations as needs, and others as desires, serves to subjugate people to certain technologies. These technologies are those deemed necessary, following a neo-liberal language of cost-effectiveness where desires can be seen as liabilities.