It's pretty sad about Bill Clinton

[drthais]

the obvious palsy he has in both hands...it was difficult to watch.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. What palsy? Can't have been that obvious

because I was observing his hands and thinking how they're not tiny and stubby like Trump's. Didn't notice any palsy.

[riversedge]

3. ha ha. good one.

[montana_hazeleyes]

6. How funny!

I was thinking the same thing! LOL

[lilsourgoose]

2. He's almost 70.

What's wrong with you? That's what you took away from the speech?

[drthais]

15. of course not!

It was just an aside...
his speech was quite fabulous!

I just found it worrisome, that is all

[Iggo]

43. That wasn't an aside. That was your OP.

[rjsquirrel]

4. He has a slight tremor

So what? He's an old man. His mind is quit clearly every bit as sharp as ever and his political charisma is undimmed.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Hey, 70 isn't old!!

[rjsquirrel]

36. It is when you've had heart surgery

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

53. Five heart attacks....

Two strokes, a quadruple bypass with complications. That was four years ago.
Now very near to 70.

Yesterday my faithful dog and I hiked on our daily five mile romp through the state park across the street from us. Came home had a short lunch, picked up my wife and headed out for a three hour kayak ride on the river also in the park.

Over the last three years+ we have not missed more than 15 days out of a year hiking those five daily. I live in SE Michigan, the summers are beautiful, the winters can get...interesting.
Guess I'm just blessed.

Peace to you

[snooper2]

57. 70 is the new 40 LOL

[Stinky The Clown]

24. We septuagenarians are just getting started!

Got that, kid?

[leftofcool]

5. You were watching his hands?

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Where did you come from?

Jeebus Kerist

Wherever it was, go back there.

[63splitwindow]

18. Agreed. It was a GREAT speech right on the mark. Masterfully delivered. nt

[cwydro]

56. Thank you.

One of the silliest OPs I've seen lately.

[obnoxiousdrunk]

9. Thanks for your concern.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

10. The man had triple bypass

For god's sake,

[BlueStateLib]

11. 2013 Bill Clinton Opens Up About Hand Tremor

“The first time it happened, I had to go get myself checked to make sure I didn’t have Parkinson’s [disease],” Clinton said.

Clinton said he was “so relieved” to find out he did not have Parkinson’s, he “didn’t care how much it shook after that.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/bill-clinton-hand-tremor_n_2503432.html

[chowder66]

12. He most likely has benign essential tremor which is common in older people

He got checked out when he first noticed it to rule out Parkinson's and is on record that he gets shaky hands when he gets tired. It worsens as you get older but it's nothing to worry about.

[Historic NY]

34. I'm a lot younger than him and sometimes it happens...

like he says when he's tired. I noticed it at a young age probably because of all the years of working the graveyard shift. Sometimes it bugs me when I'm working on one of my cars.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

13. I didn't see anything like that.

[greymattermom]

14. It looks like essential tremor to me.

It's very common and not very serious.

[drthais]

16. good to hear

glad someone here has some information about that...
and thank you for passing it along

[3catwoman3]

21. I noticed it also.

More in the left hand, and not all the time. When you are clinically trained, it is hard not to notice things, even when they are subtle.

[greatauntoftriplets]

52. I have essential tremor and it's no big deal.

It's hereditary in my family. My father had it, as did his mother and grandfather.

There are also medications that can cause hands to shake.

[sinkingfeeling]

17. I'm 68 and I still think he's the sexist man alive. When I met

him back in 1998, I almost fainted. Leave him alone.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

27. wow...was that a Freudian slip?

[leftofcool]

29. I would have slept...................

ah, never mind.

[Liberal_in_LA]

19. nothing sad about. He's doing ok.

[thucythucy]

20. So seeing someone with a disability makes you uncomfortable?

Why?

I don't want to jump to conclusions, but discomfort at the sight of someone with a disability is one of those attitudinal barriers people in the movement have been fighting for generations. As with the LGBT community, the more people with disabilities come out into the public arena, and "normalize" disability, the better for those of us with disabilities and for society in general.

I can remember a time when someone out on the street in a power wheelchair drew expressions of shock, pity, even hostility. Today it's not nearly as big a deal, at least not in the major urban centers. We have to all do our best to get beyond those reactions, and the more public folks with disabilities are, the sooner that will happen.

Disability is a part of the human experience. Sooner or later most everyone will become disabled. Hopefully, when it happens to you, we'll have progressed enough as a society so that people won't see you as "sad" and "difficult to watch."

BTW, David Brooks on PBS thought Clinton's use of his hands was "beautiful." I'd have to agree.

Best wishes.

[3catwoman3]

22. Perhaps the discomfort arises from thinking about...

...the frustration that coping with a disability can cause.

Just a couple of days ago, I was walking at an indoor track. A young man in a motorized wheel chair came in, accompanied by 2 adults who looked to be care takers rather than parents. He looked as if he has one of the degenerative neuromuscular diseases like muscular dystrophy. He was painfully thin. His 2 attendants helped him grasp a walker fitted with forearm supports. Over several minutes, and with multiple pauses, he managed to cover about 40 feet.

I passed by several times during his efforts, and I felt uncomfortable watching him struggle to do something I can do without even thinking about it - walk. I felt as if I were flaunting my able-bodied status.

[thucythucy]

55. Possibly.

But I've often run into situations where the mere presence of a person with a disability, whether or not he or she was obviously in pain or struggling, provoked a measure of discomfort and embarrassment (and sometimes, especially years back, simple amazement) out of all proportion to the specific situation.

Anyway, I certainly didn't see President Clinton as someone obviously in pain or struggling. It looked to me like he was absolutely enjoying himself, disability or no disability. Which is why the notion that simply seeing him on TV would make someone sad and uncomfortable has me wondering.

I wonder too about the person you saw. Knowing very many people with MS and MD, who see their wheelchairs as tools of mobility and even liberation, I wonder if the two caregivers were somehow pushing this person to use a walker, when a wheelchair would be so much more enabling (especially since he already had one). Very many of my friends had to advocate very hard to get their wheelchairs, since the idea of being "confined to a wheelchair" was such a hang-up to the able-bodied folks around them.

It's much the same with prosthetics. It used to be that the main purpose of a prosthetic leg, for instance, wasn't to enable better mobility, but to hide the disability, to try to get the disabled person to "pass" and thus accommodate the squeamishness of the able-bodied people they might encounter. This has changed--nowadays prosthetic legs are designed more often for comfort and ease of use, rather than to try to pretend the person isn't missing their leg or legs--but it took decades of advocating to get this to happen. Again, this was all more related to the "discomfort" that able-bodied people felt around someone with an obvious disability, than with enabling that person to live up to his or her full capacity.

Disability is an integral part of the human experience. We need to face it for what it is, rather than impose our own preconceptions and stereotypes, which often as not hinder more than help.

Sorry to lecture like this, but obviously that comment hit a nerve.

Best wishes.

[NBachers]

23. It's pretty Sad that Bill Clinton called Hillary a Girl!!

[RandySF]

26. And he called himself a boy.

What's the issue?

[NBachers]

28. I don't use the sarcasm thingie. I just assume my sarcasm is obvious enough without it.

I'm comparing the non-importance of the post with the non-importance of boy/girlgate.

[RandySF]

31. Ah, gotcha.

It's just that someone WAS actually offended earlier.

[Iggo]

46. That's all that Ms Maddow and The Liar could talk about afterwards.

That's the first time I watched any of either convention on TV (my SIL loves Bubba, so I volunteered to hold the 4-month-old until the speech was over) and now I get what some of you are saying. They're just looking for something wrong to talk about instead of something right.

I haven't watched TV news for a long time, and I don't miss it one bit.

[womanofthehills]

41. I think it was sweet

[Cha]

50. lol

Rachel?

NBachers~

[blue neen]

25. Oh, brother.

I'm sorry that's what you got out of that amazing speech. Geez.

[sufrommich]

30. Pathetic.nt

[tenderfoot]

32. Bill Frist is also known to make medical diagnosis from watching tv television.

eom

[fleabiscuit]

42. He one of those tv preachers?

[tenderfoot]

44. No. The former Senate Majority Leader under George W. Bush

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Letter_Frist_Schiavo_diagnosis_being_reviewed_in_Te_0630.html

[FarPoint]

33. I noticed too.

[stopbush]

35. 70 isn't old.

I'm 61, and 61 is the new 59.

Bill did touch on it when he mentioned that those of us nearer the end of our time than the beginning spend a lot of time thinking and worrying about family. We worry that they will have a difficult time of it when we're no longer around to provide comfort and shelter for them. It's a concern that's very real for we oldsters, and something the under-40 crowd doesn't think about (nor should they).

[Rex]

37. Are you kidding me? I forgot how unbelievable of a speaker he is.

Yeah his hands shook, big deal he ain't no spring chicken anymore. His speech was amazing. His showmanship is still the best there is.

[LisaL]

38. Difficult to watch someone with a slight tremor?

All righty then.

[RobinA]

48. I Think The "Difficulty"

comes from the acknowledgement that we're all getting older. When most of us first met Clinton he was an energetic guy who jogged and liked McDonalds. That was 24 years ago. Now he's 70 and has a slight tremor and isn't allowed to eat at McDonalds. His tremor reminds us that time's a-passing.

[Bucky]

39. Oh, that poor man, he looks like he's aged a quarter century since he first became famous

I believe he's suffering from gerontophobia

[RobinA]

49. Good One!

[kestrel91316]

40. A little tremor. Doesn't mean anything.

I had an employee years ago, a girl in her early 20s, she had a familiar hand tremor she said was just called "essential tremor".

Once I learned to work with it, it didn't even affect her work as a cat veterinary assistant.

No big drama. Older people's hands shake a lot of the time. I am nearly 60 and I can see a very fine tremor in mine sometimes.

[womanofthehills]

45. my grandmother had hand tremors for 20 years and lived to 93 yrs old

prescription meds can also cause tremors

I thought he looked great - still has his good looks and he looked healthy.

[Hoyt]

47. Those benign tremors are common among a lot of people. My uncle's head and hands shook from his 40s.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with him mentally or physically. My hands shake a bit at times, especially after an overload of caffeine.

[Koinos]

51. Nothing to worry about here.

Apparently, Bill saw a doctor about it. He feared it might be Parkinson's. The doctor assured him that it happens to many aging people occasionally. It usually happens when they feel tired, and it is perfectly normal.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/18/bill-clinton-hand-tremor_n_2503432.html

[Photographer]

54. Go away.