Special week to boost cleft lip kids' confidence? Americans devote many weeks every year to awareness efforts or consciousness raising re this or that health issue. Why not have a special week for cleft kids. After all, cleft lips and palates are the most common birth defect, after heart defects. Not every cleft kid has a family able to pay for a cleft camp in their state or a gathering somewhere across the country for cleft kids. So, at least a special week, or even a special day, for such … [Read more...]
Older cleft lip kids & adults need Support
Cleft Lip Awareness Week. This is Cleft Awareness Week and one campaign in the U.K. is using the time to highlight the fact that many people affected by cleft lip and palate don't get much support, especially as adults. In Western countries, traditional cleft care normally ends around the age of 18 years. As a result, little is known about the longer-term outcomes of those living with cleft lip and/or palate. This is part of why I wrote Cleft Heart: Chasing Normal: to give people an idea of how … [Read more...]
Date a harelip? Cont’d.
Harelip, cleft lip? What's in a word? Using the word harelip in these times is a bit like using the N-word or other slang words for minorities. It's offensive to cleft-affected people and an indication of ignorance about the birth defect commonly known as a "cleft lip." Actually, doctors and scientists often use the medical term, cheiloschisis. See other technical terms for clefts and their repair. I'll continue now with more responses to an Asker's question on Ask Yahoo, "Would you … [Read more...]
Channeling Malcolm X and Jonathan Trumbull on Book tour
An update on Cleft Heart, the first-ever memoir written about the cleft experience by a cleft. East Coast --North-- book tour. I’m excited that my first East Coast tour for Cleft Heart is about to start. A serious family illness delayed it after my successful West Coast tour last fall. If you live in the northern part of the East Coast, especially in New York or Connecticut, here's a chance to ask me anything about the book face to face. I'll be at the Audubon Med Center Bookstore in … [Read more...]
Date a person with a Harelip?
Before dealing with a topic I encountered throughout my adolescence and young adulthood, a few words about Jack Dupree and the lyrics to the song he sang in the You Tube video posted in my last blog. Singing the "Harelip Blues." So here's what I found out about the song, but not becasue of Snopes (see prior blog). I dug a bit and found--according to a Wiki article--that Jack Dupree sometimes used the equivalent of poetic license for singers—an artistic conceit—by singing as if he had a cleft … [Read more...]
A song called “Harelip Blues?”
The harelip (sometimes hare lip) label. When an internet site said it featured lyrics for a song by jazz great Jack Dupree called, "Harelip Blues," I had my doubts. Doubts about whether he, or anyone else as the site claimed, ever sang such a song. The reason is that many teens, and certainly most adults, know that "harelip" is perceived as a derogatory term for a cleft lip. It's not that cleft-affected kids and grownups don't like being associated with cute bunnies and rabbits or don't know … [Read more...]
Duck Dynasty’s Mia—born with bilateral cleft lip & palate.
Mia's cleft lip and how her parents coped. As noted earlier this week, I'm passing on some details now about Small Mia, as opposed to Tiny Mia and Big Mia. Since it's instructive to those new to cleft lips and palates---especially parents of cleft-afflicted babies--I'll highlight how Mia and her parents handled the initial news about her clefts and reacted to her early surgeries. Mia's parents, Jase and Missy Robertson of the hit show Duck Dynasty’s, had to oversee the closure of … [Read more...]