Inspired by the now-classic Fat Hate Bingo and Anti-Feminist Bingo cards, I give you the Invisible Illness Bingo Card! All of these are things that have been said to me or people I know IRL. I know the design isn't too high-tech, but I'll save the super-fancy Photoshopped version for the next incarnation. Click to see a bigger version.
Also, I am now taking suggestions for Version 2, because there's more truly stunning vitriol and misguided "good intentions" out there, waiting to be assigned places upon an online bingo card. Leave suggestions and feedback in the comments, please.
27 comments:
That. Is. Awesome.
This is SO getting bookmarked.
"I wish I could be "disabled", so I could get all the great parking spaces!"
"You look cheerful! You must be feeling better!"
"Oh, when I was depressed, I thought I was sick too."
My all time favorite is that I only ever get complimented on looking "healthy!" when I've caked on makeup that day.
(sigh)
Ha, bookmarked.
"you must get something out of being sick", is my favorite.
There are no hereditary conditions and disabling injuries. Only our self-disabling super powers of doom.
This is amazing. I loved the alternative therapy one....someone told me a couple of weeks ago I should try acupuncture....AFTER I told them that the illness is caused because my body's proteins don't work. I'm sure a few needles will make those darn cells work!
I hear The Secret one all the time as I work in a bookstore.
"Are you sure you're not just pretending?"
I love the crap I get from my MIL, I shouldn't "confess" those things. If I didn't "say" I had rheumatoid arthritis it wouldn't be happening. I guess the rh factor in my lab work was just a fluke. How many people come up to you and swear they have the cure?
Bookmarked like whoa.
"Chronic fatigue? That's just a wastebasket diagnosis! It doesn't mean anything." [from an allergist]
"Sounds made up to me."
"So-and-so's aunt has that, but she gets out and does stuff all the time."
And of course the book recommendations. And the doctor that suggested I find religion.
That is sooo spot one! brilliant. The fibromylagia handbook!!!LOL
"My daughter and I both have PMS. It's awful, isn't it?" And she was TOLD it was Fibro! Huh?
Next time I saw her, "I've had a headache all day." You have got to be kidding.
I put all of my Mom's in a poem, "Mom Says": http://theiciexperience.blogspot.com/2008/03/mom-says-poem.html
From Mom with love -
Maybe if you did not take all those medications you would not be so sick.
Why is it that all you read is stuff about your physical problems? Maybe concentrating on them to the exclusion of everything else could be adding to it. (Or Causing it?)
Well I just think that you focus on every little pain and problem you have and maybe if you didn’t it wouldn’t be such a problem.
Maybe the fact that you get angry should tell you something.
Once she saw the poem and how I turned each thing she said round (i.e. I am not sick because I am angry. I am angry because I am sick.) she did actually seem to get a clue...
Love the Bingo card. May I put it on my blog with a link to yours, and the request for more suggestions to be submitted via your comments?
I found this page due to a link left in a different journal, I forget which one.
I like the idea, and most of the comments. However, the last one needs re-worked. I find it extremely inappropriate to list using medical cannabis (which can be inhaled, or eaten, not just smoked) along with addictive and destructive things like gambling and shooting heroin.
Medical cannibis has a *lot* of science behind it, and forms of medical cannabis are being used in enlightened countries like Great Britian and Canada.
http://www.drugdevelopment-technology.com/projects/sativex/
In fact, there are even people in the United States getting *free* medical cannabis from the government! Goggle the name Irvin Rosenfeld -- I met this man (we were both testifying at a government hearing).
Check out this video of him:
http://www.videojug.com/interview/life-as-a-government-marijuana-recipient-2
Access to medical cannabis is a political issue, not a health issue. Medical cannabis has been clearly scientifically proven to be an effective drug for pain control, much better than most of the drugs which the pharmaceutical want someone to use. This is a political issue based on control of the market by the big pharmaceutical companies, and your failure to recognize that does a huge discredit to your chart.
It would be far more appropriate to include a space which addresses the politics around denying people effective pain control.
It always happens. I'm always one space away from Bingo! ;p
Lee, I find your comment presumptuous in the extreme. How dare you tell me what "discredits" my work, and what is "appropriate" and not.
However: I am leaving it up as an example of how NOT to critique someone's work.
Are you going to put the standard FIVE columns in version 2?
Quercki, I was unaware that "the standard" was so important.
Silly me, to think that *what is on the card* is more important than the format.
Where the hell are these people coming from?
They pick the oddest things to get all outraged about so they don't have to actually think about what you have to say.
Wow. I've heard so many of those. Looking at them all arranged like this kind of just makes me really sad. :/
Here from Shakesville.
I've got to say that I've heard most of these - I have seasonal affective disorder - and the one that really rang bells with me the most was the "If I haven't heard of it, it doesn't exist!", from my doctor.
Also, here's another one: my (now-ex) manager at work came down to the basement where I was working to tell me that "it's sunny outside right now, so you must be all better!"
This was in a place where half the lights had been turnd off to save power. And it was dark by the time I left work.
"I'm sure you'll get better."
I know this is an old post...but the free space (or add one ) should say in really really large letters "DIET AND EXERCISE!". Ya know, it's the end all catch all cure.
Made of win!
You are truely wicked!!! May I borrow this for my epilepsy blog... can't say how many times folks have commented that "I don't LOOK sick". And the rest.
Keep writing.
Cordially,
Paula Apodaca
E. is for Epilepsy by Paula Apodaca
http://www.epilepsy-paula.blogspot.com
I loved the Bingo card but I have to say I have a hard time understanding why what lee said upset you so much. For the thousands of people around the world that use medicinal cannabis, it is effective medicine. I would hope that you would examine the evidence and think about why activists get so upset by the politicization of medicine. It is extremely unfair to put using medicinal cannabis in the same category as shooting up. Aren't you being a bit dismissive?
Tanya, please read this post: http://whotookthebomp.blogspot.com/2009/05/in-which-i-admit-to-getting-some-stuff.html
"Depression? You don't look sad!"
And upon being told that I'm unable to drive because of my medication...
"Well you'll have to come off them then!"
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