Homework #26: Looking back and forward

There are six key insights and ideas that I have learned during our study on illness and dying. These are:

1.      -Health care in the US is not all its cracked up to be. Even if you have health insurance (and many don’t) it may not cover you when you get sick [Sicko]

2.      -The US healthcare system is driven by the incentive to maximize profit for insurance companies; pharmaceutical companies; hospitals and doctors. [Sicko]

3.      -Most people fear and deny death. Others don’t know how to respond to sick people because they are scared of confronting illness and death. [Tuesdays With Morrie]

4.      -People expect heath care like the kind on TV. They want to be treated with top-notch medicine and machines. Hospitals may not have the machine or feel it’s needed but the people demand it. They feel  they should be guaranteed good health outcomes. [Art as medicine 12/10/10 – WNYC Radio – Studio360.org]

5.      -DNR orders may cause conflict between patient and families or families and doctors. [Grey’s Anatomy – TV show on ABC]

6.      -People take different approaches to health care such as preventive care and homeopathy (acupuncture, tea, bed-rest) vs. antibiotics and meds. US healthcare tends to overmedicate patients. This is partly driven by profits for pharmaceutical companies. [Class discussion; Sicko]

Some helpful sources in gaining these insights:

·        -Sicko helped me see what our country’s health care system is all about – money is more important than people.

·        -Tuesdays With Morrie helped me see that death is a part of life and if we understand that, it helps us live better lives.

·        -People’s experiences – Talking to people I know about their experiences has helped me learn the experience of being in healthcare institutions. This includes my grandmother in a nursing home; a family friend in intensive care; and a family friend who had to fight for DNR.

·        -Class discussion helped me to see that there are different approaches to healing.

An area that I would like to explore in the rest of this unit is ways people are trying to find to die with more dignity and respect. We can try to seek out examples of this.

Homework #22: Illness and Dying Book 1

Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays With Morrie. New York: Doubleday, 1997. Print.

In Tuesdays with Morrie, there isn't much that I can connect to because I've never had this type of relationship with someone either dying or very ill. However, on page 34, Mitch describes his life as emotionless, technological and boring. He had lost all of his ambition and adventure and was feeling old in that particular section as he sat with his old professor. I kind of identified with this because I fell like my life is consumed by technology and my age has made me care less than when I was a little girl dreaming other worlds and new things to do each day. I feel those two things are connected because the technology is what took all that imagination and freedom away from me. 

"'So many people who come to visit me are unhappy.' Why? 'Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves.'" (Pg. 35) This stood out to me for two reasons. One was that Morrie insinuated that the people who visit him feel obligated to be sad around him due to his condition and this is due to the way our culture perceives death. The other reason was more in the writing style. More often than not in this book, as far as I've read, the author does not put his words around his quotes. By doing this, I think he is detaching himself from the story. Because he is focusing the story on Morrie's life and experiences, the way I read his lines are more of a presence or spirit of the author instead of him actually being there. 

In my opinion, the way this book portrays how people deal with being sick and dying is a type of acceptance. The main character, who is the one dying, decides to continue living his life as best he can instead of getting depressed and giving up. To me, this is a very healthy way of going about dying. I feel that if you don't try to live while you can, you'll end up dying sooner than you wanted to. People who maximize that necessity to live are, in my opinion, more likely to live longer than expected because they tried. In Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie was the kind of person who didn't just sit there and feel bad for himself. He used is illness as a final lesson and an opportunity to teach someone else about what he was feeling.

Homework #21

Insights:
1. If you always work hard to get something, no matter how long it takes, it will benefit you later in life.
2. Always keep a positive attitude and your life will be filled with more life than without.
3. If you go into details and ask questions, the knowledge you gain can keep you grounded when times are tough.
4. Always give gifts to those who help you; it might give you access to thing you wouldn't have had otherwise.
5. If you treat people with humanity and respect, you will get treated the same way.


When Ms. Bernett described the way her husband looked in his bed after he came home for the last time, it reminded me of the way my grandma looked in her bed. She described him as skeletal and around ninety pounds and had to bring him back and forth to the bathroom which she didn't mind at all. When I went to visit my grandma in the nursing home we had her in, that was exactly what she looked like. At 97 she weighed a total of 89 pounds and had basically no body fat. Her hands looked like bones with skin on them and the rest of her body wasn't much better. When I first saw her that way, it scared me to think that her body would make her end up like this. But after a while I just blamed it on old age and I started to feel slightly better given the circumstances. However, when Ms. Bernett described her husband in the same way, it forced me to realize that it isn't just old age that can turn a person's whole appearance into that of a skeleton. 


Ms. Bernett gave gifts to everyone who helped her and her husband. By doing so, she opened up ties and connections that might not have otherwise been obtained. She showed kindness to people in a workplace that doesn't always get too much of it. During the final year of my grandma's life, she had a caretaker named Regina who would come and visit her from day to day to check up on her and help her out. My grandma and the rest of our  family all treated her like she was part of our family. We visited with her during our visits and went out to dinner with her. Once my grandma was in the nursing home, one would think it unnecessary to have a caretaker, but Regina stuck through. She would talk to the people who worked there and make sure that my grandma was getting the best care the place could provide. She continued to visit regularly when we were back at home even with all of her other jobs and kids. Without her care and hard work, I don't think my grandma might have lived as long as she did. I like to think that Regina did so much for our family because we showed her that we loved her as much as she loved us and we constantly showed her how grateful we were for everything. 

The one question I have is "Why does Hollywood romanticize death and illness so often when it only results in false hopes and heartbreak when the real thing actually appears?"

Homework #18: Health, Illness and Feasting

This thanksgiving was small for my family. We used to have a big meal with over 15 people in our apartment. Some were family members and others were just friends from the neighborhood. It was big and loud. This year however, we had just my family of four and my friend's family of three. Although it wasn't as big as it used to be, my mom still went all out with the cooking. She made two types of each side dish including stuffing (sausage and veggie), cranberry relish (sweet and tart), and potatoes (sweet and finger-link). The food was fantastic and we sat around for at least three hours just talking and eating. By the end of the night everyone was full. My friend's dad made Tiramisu which was delicious. Afterwards we sat, watched football and listened to the guys discuss the politics behind all of it.

In my experience of this holiday, the anti-body practices are outweighed by the bodily practices such as eating enormous amounts of food and sitting on the couch watching TV. Although part of it involves the electricity of TV, most of it consists of sitting, eating, drinking, and talking. For four hours, we ate and talked which dominated most of the day. The other part was spent cleaning and cooking for this occasion.

Although the company was small, we were supposed to have another couple guests. My friend Moise's dad is currently in the hospital. He had a mild stroke and came down with pneumonia. He is currently undergoing heavy amounts of physical therapy because one of his illnesses caused him the ability to swallow. Because of this unfortunate incident, we decided to invite Moise and his mother to join us for thanksgiving so they didn't have to cook or clean. However, they decided to spend it with family. In the end, we all suffered from health issues this holiday. Maybe not as severe as Moise's dad's, but as I looked around, most of the food we were eating was starch and fat. The healthiest thing on the table were the fried Brussels sprouts. It certainly says something about our culture when the whole country has an entire day dedicated to eating.

Homework #17: Illness and Dying

          When my grandma started to get older, we knew it was the beginning of the end for her. She was about 94 and most of it was just senility. We would have a conversation with her and she would forget about it the next day. Or she would ask the same question again and again as if it were brand new. It made my brother and me very uncomfortable at first because we would have to repeat ourselves and we weren't used to it. After a while we got used to it until last year when she fell and broke her hip. She lived alone so we had to move her to the town senior center. At first when we came to visit, she would sit up and talk to us and move around the place in her wheelchair. But after a while, she eventually stopped and didn't move from her bed. We tried out best to be there but because it's in Missouri, we could only really visit during Christmas and the summer. Last Christmas we went to visit her again. It was hard because she didn't really speak anymore either and looked very sick and frail. At only 90 pounds, she was beginning to lose it. My mother told me that she just liked having us be in the same room, but after a few days of it, it just turned into silent visits. On June 8, 2010, I came home from school to find my parents in a somber mood. My mom hugged me and I knew. We had been getting updates from my aunt who was there with her and they weren't good. My grandma had died of old age just the way a person should. 

          In the cases that I've experienced with illnesses, I've been taught to look at it in an optimistic point of view. So that a cold is just strengthening your immune system, not causing your body to hurt you. I see it as a way of thinking scientifically instead of emotionally because it helps me to feel better and not give into the negativity that illness brings. Dying however is harder to process scientifically without being emotionally stunned. When someone you know dies it takes a couple days to really notice something is wrong. your body automatically shuts down in order to protect itself from the pain. So when I see illness on TV, it doesn't affect me as much as when I see someone die on TV.

          In the american culture, modern medicine has made it so that even the common cold is treated with chemicals and antibiotics. The view of illnesses are that they are just something to be cured. Only the occasional doctor or scientist will really analyze the disease and research the source. Most people, when they get sick, go to a doctor and ask for the medicine that will lead to the fastest recovery. Although that is most desired for the general public which makes a lot of sense, no one really cares about what they're taking as long as someone has told them it will make them feel better. When it comes to dying, people in our culture tend to just accept it. At first, they will try to find a cure, but if a doctor comes in and says "you're going to die," there's a momentary shock for a few days and the one lives their life out to whenever it is they're supposed to die. People rarely say, "that's not true. I refuse to believe it." and then get up and walk out without thinking twice about it. It's generally accepted that if you have a fatal illness, you should prepare for an early death and deal with it to your own preference. My own family acts on these views in a pretty standard way. They don't do anything out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. However, I don't know how any of them would react to hearing that they were going to die but I do believe that it would result in much crying from multiple parties. This is just another form of acceptance.

HW 4: My family's food ways

When I talked to my parents about the food they ate growing up, they reminisced about all of the disgusting yet delicious foods that their parents or grandparents made them.

For my mother, she ate macaroni and cheese (homemade) with extra cream in the cheese. Her great aunt made a salad that had mayonnaise in it with a dressing that contained Cherry Coke. She loved the taste, but the diet was just too much. When she grew up, she gave me and my brother a healthier approach to food. With the occasional cookies here and there, we grew up with only whole wheat bread, only Bran Flakes or Cheerios for breakfast, and absolutely no soda in the house except birthday parties. As I got older and the country got even more unhealthy, my mother became even more of a healthy cooker. Nowadays, my family only eats grass-fed beef (on occasion), pasta once a week, no red meat, and salads with every meal. She reads books on what foods are healthy for us and buys them. During every meal she talks about how healthy the food we are eating actually is.

For my father, he grew up with a similar eating habit to my mother. His mom would cook up a can of vienna sausages and put them in a "meal salad" containing butter and cream as well. My father also had lots of soda and junk food in his house. When he grew up, he traveled around and developed a taste for exquisite foods from other countries. Now my father eats the same way my mom does. Only he is a little more quiet about his eating habits. Occasionally, he will make hamburgers and fries for us (but not very often anymore).

I think the change in eating habits comes from children rebelling against their parents. My parents became healthy eaters because they grew up with unhealthy eaters. Because my parents hold a healthy diet for me and my brother, I eat lots of junk food outside of home. Not always, but there are times when I crave McDonalds even though my parents hate it.

HW 2: Food

Food is way of survival for living things on earth. Unfortunately, humans have found a way to turn that against themselves. In today's world, there are places where eating a certain type of food, over time, can have fatal outcomes. For example, french fries and fried food might taste good at the moment, but too much of it over a long period of time could cause heart failure, diabetes, or obesity. Humans are creating foods that are cheap to make, but are mostly unhealthy. Therefore, people who can't afford healthy foods are then forced to eat food that will eventually kill them. Why is the world like this? I believe it's because over the years, humans have gotten more and more lazy. Always coming up with the easiest way of doing something. Therefore, they came up with the easiest way to make and sell food. This results in poor diets and a higher risk of disease.

In this country, the variety of cultures and ethnicities results in a high amount of different foods. Some cultures tend to have very healthy diets, while others have very poor diets.