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?"