On Sat, Sep 28, 2002 at 11:43:04AM -0400, BG Greer, PhD wrote:
I have seen this in other areas, such as mental retardation. Terms
gradually get into everyday parlance, become stigmatizing, and so
folks search and come up with a new term. Could this be happening
with "spastic vs. dystonia"? Just a rhetorical question.
I don't know if this particular piece of terminology is used
elsewhere, but one of the physios I saw after my last bad fall,
referred to my spasticity as `hypertonic'. Hadn't heard it before -
and the opposite is of course `hypotonic'. I think, oddly enough,
that I prefer spasticity - despite spastic being used as a common
insult, and cerebral palsy. Plain, unvarnished, and straight to the
point. And now the words seem about to be superseded, I feel a very
odd affection (!?) for them, they are ingrained as part of who I am,
and - VERY oddly - I no longer feel the shame and stigma that the
world attaches to them. Strange....
I'd have to agree with your rhetorical question, Bobby.
And `dystonia', sounds like a small Eastern-European country to me,
rather than a medical term. ;-)
Rayna
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