posted
Most people are completely uninformed about epilepsy. Therefore, it seems that the condition is fair game, unlike cancer, heart disease, or any of the other disorders that can cost a person their life.
My daughter had epilepsy. She had her first seizure at the age of 14 months. What followed was a nightmare. Have you ever seen a baby convulse? Have you ever seen a baby given a spinal tap? Her screams echoed off the walls. Imagine yourself holding the person you love the most in the world down for painful procedures, over and over again. Imagine blood draws every 2 weeks for almost a year. Imagine meds that cause liver damage and mood swings in a toddler. Imagine your child vomiting down your back as she is rushed into the ER with a seizure on her second birthday.
posted
I'm sorry to hear about this, space opera. I'm nowhere near as close to the condition as you, but I work with a lot of people who have physical problems like this and others. A lot of jokes make me uncomfortable, jokes about physically deformed people, mentally handicapped people, or people with life-altering diseases.
However, I also realize that the joking is usually more innocent than it seems, and most people--most adults, I should say--would be horrified to know they're hurting another person.
We're all a bit clunky at this civility thing at times, and it takes a post like yours to help us improve ourselves.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote: Ralphie knows how to make a joke on people who joke about epilepsy.
It was a pretty good one, wasn't it.
Space Opera - I can sympathize. I'm not really sure why people find convulsions funny, either. Even before I knew my sister was epileptic, I didn't find them funny. It seems sort of a cheap joke to me, but people do find it funny and, admittedly, there have been times when a well-placed epilepsy joke has had me rolling.
My apologies about your daughter. On the plus side, seizures are taxing but very rarely fatal.
posted
I don't know. My mom died from cancer and each time I heard a joke about cancer after that it made me mad for a long time, because, well, it's not an easy death (if there is such thing). I still have so much horrors in my mind that people laughing from that (and especially those who continue to smoke because cancer happens only to the others) make me sick. But now I don't tell a thing about it to them. Know what ? Because most people, if you react this way, will think pain has made you insane and that their joke was perfectly funny. They won't stop to tell these shoking jokes. They will just do that, and then tell everybody how mad you are.
EDIT to add : anyway I don't speak to francophobes, Frisco.
[ June 28, 2004, 09:33 AM: Message edited by: Anna ]
Posts: 3526 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I've laughed at and made jokes about Parkinsons, largely because my grandmother, father and sister all have it (past tense in my grand mother's case). In the face of everything, it gives me hope to be able to laugh at it, more so because I've seen them do it to.
Not that I don't sympathize with why jokes can be tasteless. But we're having a bonding, sharing-of-feelings moment, right?
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I think what sucks for a lot of folks is that people tend to either laugh or cry about serious things.
My family, we're laughers.
Spaceopera, seems to be criers.
The two will always collide. Laughers because we're terribly afraid of crying because it would force us to feel the depth and gravity of a situation. Criers because the laughers don't seem to be taking things seriously.
I don't joke about epilepsy. It never seemed funny, and those convulsions are just horrid to see, nevermind experience on a close level.
I do joke about cancer. My uncle was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. Usually it's found at two centimeters, his is at ten. They have to do chemo/radiation before they can even operate because of it's size. The cancer is sarcoma, and it's in his gluteus maximus. Yes, it's in his butt. Do you realize how many ass jokes my family has made, including my uncle? The best one is that he's getting a prosthetic ass. It's okay to laugh at that. It's how we take seriousness from our eyes.
But...
If anyone in my family was a crier, this would create a horrible collision of outlooks.
So just joking, from entirely outside a situation, hurts.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Ok, I've calmed down and chilled out now. I think the reason I get so angry when I hear epilepsy jokes is that usually the people who are making them have no experience with the disorder. I don't know that I'll ever hear an epilepsy joke and laugh. It wasn't a friend or even a grandparent - it was my daughter, who was too young to defend herself against the social stigma of epilepsy. Please understand - she's six now, and we dealt with epilepsy for four years of her life (five if you count the year of weaning off the meds). I guess my thing is that I hate it when people joke about it not knowing how serious it is. That said, I'll continue to chill.
posted
I have a good friend age 28 who was just diagnosed with a brain tumor in the motor section of his brain.
A grand mal seizure in the movie theater about a month ago was the first indication anything was wrong. He jokes about them includingn that they aren't that bad. I don't know if I could. But his family is definitely in the "laugh" section of the spectrum too.
In the mean time they've got the best doctors in CA trying to figure out what the best course of treatment is.
posted
I guess it's just different when it's a child who doesn't understand what's happening to her at all. If she had been older, maybe she would have made jokes and we would have laughed at them. But all she knew was to scream in terror every time she saw someone in a white coat.
posted
The gravity of a situation is much more apparent when the fear of the one suffering can't be relieved by any means we know. For adults, even older children, it can be reached through laughter or tears. For small children, barely able to understand past concepts of mom, dad, protect me from pain, care for me...the idea of not being able to stop the pain, for both parent and child, must be the stuff of nightmares. Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
My uncle had brain cancer for five years before it finally killed him. He, his wife, and his kids all laughed and made jokes, even when he could barely get out of bed. I never understood it and I felt very uncomfortable when they would do it. Since then I've learned to laugh about things like that, if that's what makes others feel better. I think it's more about the actual person suffering and his feelings than your own.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
My family is definitely on the "laugh" side of the spectrum. I remember my grandfather making everyone laugh from his hospital bed in my grandparents living room only a few days after he was given two weeks to live (he died exactly two weeks after that diagnosis).
We are laughing now, too. We have decided my grandmother (different side of the family) is on her 5th life. There have been several times they were sure she would not pull through, but she did again (she still really isn't out of the woods just yet). This time though, there was a little miscommunication somewhere along the line. I ended up thinking for an hour on Saturday that my grandmother had died. What kind of doctor calls someone's husband and tells them not to rush to the hospital (1/2 an hour from their home) because the wife will probably be dead before they get there anyway?
Now how do we explain to Mooselet that Grandma Etta is not in heaven with Jesus?
Posts: 399 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:For small children, barely able to understand past concepts of mom, dad, protect me from pain, care for me...the idea of not being able to stop the pain, for both parent and child, must be the stuff of nightmares.
I'm probably at least 3-5 years from having kids, and this thought has actually woken me up at night.
posted
BtL and mack summed up what I was going to say in a much clearer and more consise way, but I feel like saying something.
The laughers/criers thing is definitely true. I'm undoubtedly more of a laugher - but, luckily for me, so are the rest of my friends and family. I mean, in my whole life, the jokes I probably laughed the hardest at and tell the most were the jokes about suicide and schizophrenia. Heck, the first joke I remember telling was "Why did the chicken stop in the middle of the road? To commit suicide!". I told it the day after my mom found one of my closest adult friends dead in her bathtub. Since my grandmother's recent diagnosis, the cancer jokes around here have skyrocketed and I'm sure they'll continue long after she drops dead later this year.
However, traumas and torments that I have never dealt with personally, or that I haven't grieved over because of a close friend, that are joked about usually tick me off. Epillepsy, for instance. It seems like a truly horrid experience, and I would never even think of joking about it. Same goes for rape, murder, and a number of things. Yet, I know many people who have had one of these things happen to them or somebody their close to and they joke about them endlessly. Granted, it takes a while for their wounds to heal, but when they do, they heal with a bang.
Posts: 2292 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
I think there's another important difference in terms of "types" of jokes about epilepsy, cancer, illnesses and disabilities.
A lot of the jokes that use, say, epilepsy as a focus will be told by someone who has no connection and the joke is one that hinges on minimizing, ridiculing or marginalizing the person with the condition. The person with epilepsy is "the other." (We had a long and somewhat pained discussion about this in regard to mental retardation and jokes quite awhile back.)
Jokes people tell about themselves and what they deal with are probably different in both content and intent from jokes that get told ABOUT them.
posted
I've known two wonderful people who suffered from epilepsy. The first was a family friend and a really great dad. He had suffered with it for years and was feeling pretty confident that his medical regimen was working at keeping the seizures at bay. He was catching up on paperwork alone at work one day when the seizure hit and his wife was outside the building at the time trying to reach him on the phone to let her in.
Horrible.
The second was an extremely bright student at UCF who would've earned straight A's if she hadn't missed a major portion of every semester because of the multiple health problems she faced. I've never actually known anyone so able to absorb course material. Even the guy I know who has idetic memory was a piker compared to this girl. I gave her an A anyway, but I know a lot of profs who failed her because she missed the final, or a midterm. I figured she'd mastered more material than any other student and deserved a top grade.
I don't know what happened to her, but she was open with the fact that she was not expected to live much longer (not due to epilepsy but due to other major problems -- severe diabetes mainly).
Anyway, while I personally laugh about just about everything, I was raised by some fairly serious people who would do the smackdown if anyone joked about illness. It all stemmed, I think, from their brother who had polio and had to be left in Italy while they all came to the US to live. I've met Nino (my uncle) once and he's a really nice person who can't speak or do anything for himself -- it wasn't the fashion to give PT or OT to people back then. You were either able or not. Period. So he never learned. Sad.
Space Opera, I'm so sorry about your little one.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
(((((((((Space Opera))))))))))) I can totally identify. My uncle has it, and has had it since he was a young boy. However, it's gotten a lot worse over the last few years, and he keeps having to be rushed to the hospital. My family and I always feel so helpless because we live about 4000 miles away from him, and can't help him when he needs it, but thankfully next year we'll be closer. I don't think I've ever heard epilepsy jokes, which is a good thing, as it would make me unreasonably angry, probably.
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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