Being the Devils advocate here, how do you know it was a joke? Did he laugh about it after? Ever think that he could have been drawing awareness to the problem and actually being sypathetic? Just a thought. The problem with text is you have no idea of the tone that is meant and left to the reader to interpret. I can tell you from experience I have said totally innocent stuff, and had the person reading freak out because they took it the wrong way and not how it was meant. Food for thought