My Story – Submitted by: Reina
One night, a couple of months back, I was watching Jon and Kate Plus Eight. I love that show and think it is fascinating to folow the lives of that family. I also love the way they do things together. Their family is so precious. They are so lucky. However, one particular episode struck a nerve but inspired me at the same time. And, I thank the family’s show prefusely for getting the fire ignited that is responsible for getting the ball rolling.Continue reading
My Story – Submitted by: Reina
You guys probably recall me sharing a story about my finally accepting my incontinence and no longer being ashamed. In that story, I stated how I saw a particular episode on John and Kate Plus 8, and it gave me a desire to engage in efforts to educate the world about incontinence, letting people know that there is no need to be ashamed of having the condition and that it does not have to rule their lives. Well, I’m back to give you all an update. I know it has been awhile, but here it is.Continue reading
My Story – Submitted by: Nora
First, thank you Simon Foundation for allowing voices to be heard on what has been past stigmatized and silenced.
I am a woman in my thirties who has struggled with incontinence my whole life. I hid my condition for a long time, because I had learned to feel shame and guilt and act in denial.Continue reading
“Living With Quiggles” has covered a wide range of stigma issues such as the impact of staring; how language stigmatizes; the decision to attempt to “pass” in society by keeping a health challenge or disability hidden; the reactions when the birth of a baby brings an unexpected Quiggle into a family; and many other subtle issues of stigma in healthcare.
For the most part we’ve explored stigmatization as it applies to strangers who connect briefly as they stumble upon one another while going about their daily lives. But how does one handle stigma when the dynamics become more personal and the relationships closer? How do our egos interfere?Continue reading
Bob Love was an NBA basketball player who lives with a Quiggle.
Most of us vividly remember our very first jobs even though they weren’t likely to have been in the proverbial mail room. My first was walking beans, unless of course you count the Christmas when I was five and started wrapping Christmas purchases sold in my father’s small town men’s clothing store. The pay at the time was a daily trip to see Santa in his special little house which was set up each Christmastime on the lawn of the court house. Since no dollars changed hands, I think that walking beans really qualifies as my first job.
For you city folk, walking beans means being up long before the sun, rushing to a designated pick-up spot in town, riding in the back of an old pick-up farm truck to the fields where you will then spend 14 hour days walking acres and acres of rows of beans, cultivating the soil, and removing the invading corn plants. “Blazing sun” and “dog days of August” took on an entirely new meaning within a day of starting my first job. The compensation was bragging rights at school in the fall that you hadn’t whimped out and, if memory serves, $.50 an hour.
My Story – Submitted by: Anonymous
I was born with spina bifida. I was also one of the lucky ones – I could walk, even run, and never suffered from hydroencephalitis (water on the brain). I am also urinary and fecal incontinent.
At the age of 3 years, I had a urinary diversion surgery called an illial [ileal] loop done. I wore a urinary bag until I was 18. Kids can be cruel. In addition to the normal teasing that goes with growing up, I also had to deal with being shunned due to the bag springing leaks, as well as regular accidents from the bowel incontinence. You can probably imagine how bad things got. When I was 18, an artificial sphincter was installed on my bladder – I still had to self-catheterize to pee, but at least I didn’t have to wear that damned bag.
Ms. Kaoru Nishimura, RN, received the 2015 John J. Humpal Award.
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) May 26, 2015 — Professor Christine Norton, RN, PhD, Honorary President of the Innovating for Continence Conference 2015 and a leading authority on bowel/fecal incontinence, presented Ms. Nishimura with the John J. Humpal Award at the Foundation’s conference dinner. The fifth meeting in the Innovating for Continence series attracted delegates from around the world, including participants from Australia, Germany, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Japan, and throughout the USA.Continue reading
Chicago, Illinois (PRWEB) May 06, 2015
The poster entitled “The Stigma Associated with Urinary Continence: The Impacts on Self-Perception for Older Women,” by lead author Kenneth Southall (McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada), was awarded first place at the April 15-17, 2015 international conference Innovating for Continence: The Engineering Challenge. Continue reading
Dr. Rick Rader accepting the Defeating Stigma in Healthcare Award
Chicago, IL, May 11, 2013 –(PR.com)– The Simon Foundation for Continence recently announced Rick Rader, MD, as the 2013 Defeating Stigma in Healthcare Award recipient. Dr. Rader is the Director of the Morton J. Kent Habilitation Center at the Orange Grove Center (Chattanooga, TN), a nationally known community agency supporting the needs of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.Continue reading
Adjusting to a stigmatizing health condition happens, in all likelihood, in a series of phases perhaps not unlike those described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross when she put forth her ideas about the process of death and dying. Goffman in his study of stigma suggests that there indeed is such a process: “the stigmatized individual can come to feel that he should be above passing, that if he accepts himself and respects himself he will feel no need to conceal his failing”. However, Goffman then goes on to write that many people (who may even be priding themselves on having made the adjustment to their stigmatizing condition) aren’t even aware that they may be doing something called covering.