No one ever IS Downs! even those that have DS

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 7:27 pm

fish123 brought this up in another thread but since then the mistake is still being made so I think it's HIGH TIME this point was brought to the forefront and made clear to all.

In today's society we don't use certain terms like [slow person] and mongoloid, but what we also don't do is label a child by their syndrome although it is considerably the lesser of the 3 evils I just mentioned and doesn't offend quite as much. Still, a child who has down syndrome is still a human first before his syndrome and is not the syndrome itself.
So we say he has DS, not he is ds or is downs.

got it?

chocolate moose

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 7:40 pm

Did you ever have a procedure done in a hospital? That's how they refer to the patients - by their symptoms.

chaylizi

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 7:55 pm

that is why people in the hospital feel so dehumanized. Instead of being people in the hospital, they are patients or diagnoses. I only need to hear someone called "the Breast Cancer lady in Rm 123" once to know it sounded nauseating IRL.

ss321

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 9:13 pm

chocolate moose wrote:

Did you ever have a procedure done in a hospital? That's how they refer to the patients - by their symptoms.

this isnt a GOOD thing cm. Its something we are actually admonished for doing, and taught not to do.
Defining a patient by their symptoms, aside from it being dehumanizing (so from a holistic standpiont is just plain wrong), actually makes it much more difficult to properly diagnose them. In essence, by doing it (even if it is just subconscious) you can miss the forest for the trees, in essence.
just because doctors and nurses do it even though they are taught not to, doesnt make it right!

also, just as an aside, when doctors refer to patients as being x y or z when it should really be said as they are "suffering from x y or z" its often just that they are trying to review the patient's history as quickly as possible for all those assembled (aka the "team.") that doesnt make it right eitehr, its just how things are done. but outside of that setting, any doctor will tell you that referring to patients in such a manner isnt exactly the nicest thing to do.

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 10:49 pm

chocolate moose wrote:

Did you ever have a procedure done in a hospital? That's how they refer to the patients - by their symptoms.

lovely!

and to answer your question yes and no I wasn't called by my symptoms. never heard myself referred to as the SIF lady but hey maybe they did so behind my back though I doubt it. Confused

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 10:57 pm

Don't people sometimes say the blind man, and not the man who is visually impaired. Or the little person and not the person who was born with dwarfism. I don't know that it's so uncommon to refer to people that way, and not as the child with or the person with.

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 11:09 pm

amother wrote:

first of all I don't say the blind man but I say the man that is blind.
second, I don't think it's the same thing as one affects only the physical and the other affects the mental as well. With kids with DS somehow their whole person is judged by their condition first. I have a relative with DS and people always express surprise that hey, he actually has a personality, he has a sense of humor. It becomes an issue worth exclaiming about.
no one ever exclaims about my sense of humor or aspects of my personality.
I don't think people that are affected physically surprise people with their individuality the same way

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 11:14 pm

hiding behind amother -Thisis just semantics. the fat lady=the lady who is fat. the pretty girl=the girl who is pretty. I understand that it is painful to have omeone's diagnosis used as an adjective. it is hard when someone close to us has a disease or syndrome. we can see the person beyond the syndrome, but the world at large, unfortunately sees the syndrome-which in the case of downs is so obvious-& therefore uses the sndrome as an adjective. I don't necessarily think this means that the person wth downs is not seen as a distinct person with characteristics & personality unique to him/her, it just comes naturally to use what is obvious to the eye as an adjective. I do appreciate that you pointed this out & I will make an effort to remember this. Just as I teach my children not to say-look at the fat man, or there goes the black woman, so too, we should never refer to someone, using their disability as an adjective. It insults their individuality.

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 11:18 pm

amother wrote:

I can't imagine that you really refer to every blind man as the man who is visually impaired. It must sound pretty stilted. I will sometimes mention a certain characteristic, including a disability, in a way that's like shorthand and not meant to be insulting. Honestly I've heard disabled people or people with other distinctions do the same about others. Its just how people speak naturally.

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 11:30 pm

Quote:

I can't imagine that you really refer to every blind man as the man who is visually impaired.

that's right because I don't.
I already said I would say "the man that is blind". Why the extra wording when it means the same thing?
visually impaired = blind.
I just don't call him the blind man.

Quote:

Its just how people speak naturally

well then this may be an opener for you. I'ts not how everyone speaks naturaly. It may be how you and some others speak naturaly but obviously what is natural for you is not natural for me and visa versa.

Some people find it natural to call ppl with mental disabilities [slow people] too, you know. Is that an excuse?

amother

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 11:44 pm

You actually don't see a difference between saying the blind man and using a term like [slow person]?

elf123

Tue, Apr 28 2009, 11:58 pm

amother wrote:

chocolate moose wrote:

Did you ever have a procedure done in a hospital? That's how they refer to the patients - by their symptoms.

lovely!

and to answer your question yes and no I wasn't called by my symptoms. never heard myself referred to as the SIF lady but hey maybe they did so behind my back though I doubt it. Confused

Sorry, my curiosity's got the better of me. What's SIF? (I'm sure it's something obvious, but...not to me!)

amother

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 1:21 am

amother wrote:

You actually don't see a difference between saying the blind man and using a term like [slow person]?

Of course I do, I'm just trying to prove a point that just because it may be natural for someone to use a certain term doesn't make it right.

elf123 SIF- secondary infertility. Chocolate moose asked if I've ever had a procedure. I had one in relation to that.

chocolate moose

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 3:40 pm

Terms like that don't bother me. They're descriptive, not value judgements.

When I would call my dr's surgeon, I would say hi, we're The Ganglion. I want to relate to the dr on his terms, not ours - what should I have said, the skinny teenager? The gumchewer? The flat chested teenager? The girl with big hair ?

hadasa

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 3:43 pm

There's a difference. Blind is an adjective. Down's syndrome is not an adjective. Just like you wouldn't say a person is cancer, is heart disease, is high blood pressure.

chocolate moose

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 3:53 pm

None of this is social. It's to be treated! What's the difference ?

Aribenj

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 4:54 pm

Yeah, when I hear someone "IS" downs, it grates on my nerves... No one IS their syndrome. I am not PCOS...

ss321

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 5:58 pm

amother wrote:

Who is to say blindness doesn't affect ones mental state as well? it probably does affect his/her personality. They interact differently with people due to the fact that they cant see so they are forced to use other senses to do what comes naturally to us! that's not a good thing, a bad thing, or anything. its just a fact. Same with "deaf people." We are only human, and we generally judge by what we see/observe. We can only discern things based on the information we already know. We group things in our minds like that, its just human nature. Saying "s/he has down syndrome" rather than "s/he IS down" is a semantic issue more than anything else. the first one sounds proper and is more polite. the second one, well, aside from the fact that in the US you sound like an absolute fool mispronouncing something that is only 4 letters long, is kindof dehumanizing, like I said before! But lets call a spade a spade. If you see a blind person, do you TRULY feel differently about them if you refer to them as "an individual who is visually impaired" rather than "a blind man?" probably not. If you see someone who is completely bald and has no eyebrows or eyelashes, you automatically think cancer. Do you ever think, alopecia? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alopecia_areata)? Most probably not. We associate what we see with what we know, with what is common, with the information we already have in our minds.
Unfortunately, it just comes down to how we are wired: we judge by what we see. I think the trend in the medical community is moving away from saying things like "she is bipolar," saying rather "she suffers from BPD." the thought is that it WILL somehow, even just sobconsciously, make a difference. but the facts remain: first impressions mean a heck of a lot. When you SEE a person, you judge based on what you see. Its hard to miss that someone has down syndrome when you first meet them. THAT is where the "oh wow! s/he has a personality, I wouldve never guessed! with such a 'mental handicap' who would know" mentality comes from (well, that, and just sheer ignorance), NOT the fact that they were referred to as "a person with down syndrome" not "a person who is down[s]"

Clarissa

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 6:10 pm

Deaf people don't appear to be very closely identified with their deafness. Deaf culture is a big deal, as is deaf pride. I doubt they'd want people tiptoeing around all the time.

ss321

Wed, Apr 29 2009, 6:16 pm

Clarissa wrote:

Deaf people don't appear to be very closely identified with their deafness. Deaf culture is a big deal, as is deaf pride. I doubt they'd want people tiptoeing around all the time.

did you watch this weeks house? (sorry off topic. it was all about "deaf pride.")