Friday, January 21, 2011
HW 32 - Thoughts following illness & dying unit
I think the most obvious connection from the previous unit to this unit is that poor food choices can lead to illness and dying. Heart Disease, Diabetes, different types of cancer and obesity can all lead to death and are all illnesses. Certain foods make it easier to fight off diseases like this but the common cheap foods found in America have been directly linked to all of these diseases. A lot of people try to keep this out of the media because most the foods we eat can be very harmful to a person's body however it is easy to see that when food is linked to illness people tend to stop eating those foods. I think companies try to keep people from fearing the foods that they serve knowing that when people see that the food is unhealthy it will lead to less money. Foods that are considered healthy are always more expensive but the health affects that are positive and are holistic ways to preventing certain illnesses are also rarely advertised because they cost a lot. The same way that death is usually hidden behind walls of a hospital the truth about food is also hidden away behind the walls of the people who prepare the foods. When people start to become more aware of the foods they are eating there will probably be a positive change in the amount of people who are obese, have diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses will change.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Homework 31- Comments 3
To Jasper (Lower Person):
I think that you choose a good topic because it was something that you and Kevin both seem to have some type of passion about. There aren't many voices or leaders for people who are disabled. The way that you used the interview to connect back to Sicko was also a very good idea because you connected something that you did on your own to something that we have been working together to do in class and figure out some of the atrocities and some of the dominant social practices. I think your best line was "This brought up the question in my head is it even possible to be sure that this wouldn't happen to you?" Because it seemed like a good way to wrap up the idea that you were aiming toward throughout your writing.
From Isabel (Higher Person):
Hey Chris,
I don't have much time but i did manage to read your blog and I think you had a couple of really sharp questions to ask your mom. It seems like you did a lot of work in coming up with some questions that connected back to what you were learning in class and this interview actually taught me a lot of things about your work and your moms lifestyle. I think the best line you recorded was "Then my best friend Denise died over a long period of time. She had breast cancer and had mastectomy on her breast. She became cancer free for ten years, but the cancer returned in her lungs. It traveled up to her brain and blinded her for a couple of days." because it did the best job at telling your reader what your learning and how it affects people. What you can improve on is proof reading some of your work and maybe adding some more of your own insights in your work. Besides that good job.
To Lucas (Group Member):
Lucas,
You did a really good job at finding all the research that you found and incorporating it into the work that we have been doing in class. You found a lot of good information to support your idea and the visual that you have at the top of your project is also very helpful to understanding what you wrote, you have a lot of food insights and it is something that makes me think a lot more about the situation then I normally would. There are a lot of good things that you have done and I am not quite sure what you could do to improve besides just always adding more insights even though you have a lot. This is a great blog and its easy to see how much effort you put into this good job.
To John (Group Member):
I liked your speech in class and it was something I didn't think about the entire unit until you did this project. I like the way you structured your post and the idea behind it. You also use evidence from the museum is a nice alternative to the internet research that most of us have done. I think on of the best lines you have on your still life post is, " It is important to analyze through the illness & dying lens and criticizing these reflections of society in culture just as it is to criticize McDonald’s advertising through a lens critical of American food ways for one general reason" because you start to attempt to connect two of our units and i like the statement that you use to wrap everything up. This was a good post.
To Ruben:
I think after you speech reading this now, I am better able to understand what you were talking about. I picked to comment on your blog because I actually liked the idea that you had because it was sort of like Amber and how there can be abuse in nursing homes because of neglect but your post is kind of the reverse of this because you talk about how you visit your grand parents. I think something you could have talked more about is what your grandparents thought and why you think you have to go visit your grandparents. You have some good ideas but I think you could have talked some more about your experiences.
To Richie:
I think you had a simple speech but it gave a brief idea of what your project was in its entirety. The reason that I wanted to comment on your blog is because it is kind of related to mine although yours is more of your experiences, I wanted to focus on my mother because she had a lot more experience like this. You do a good job at coming up with an idea that ties back to the dominant social practices we have been learning about and the idea of terminal illness also connects back to My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid. Good Post.
I think that you choose a good topic because it was something that you and Kevin both seem to have some type of passion about. There aren't many voices or leaders for people who are disabled. The way that you used the interview to connect back to Sicko was also a very good idea because you connected something that you did on your own to something that we have been working together to do in class and figure out some of the atrocities and some of the dominant social practices. I think your best line was "This brought up the question in my head is it even possible to be sure that this wouldn't happen to you?" Because it seemed like a good way to wrap up the idea that you were aiming toward throughout your writing.
From Isabel (Higher Person):
Hey Chris,
I don't have much time but i did manage to read your blog and I think you had a couple of really sharp questions to ask your mom. It seems like you did a lot of work in coming up with some questions that connected back to what you were learning in class and this interview actually taught me a lot of things about your work and your moms lifestyle. I think the best line you recorded was "Then my best friend Denise died over a long period of time. She had breast cancer and had mastectomy on her breast. She became cancer free for ten years, but the cancer returned in her lungs. It traveled up to her brain and blinded her for a couple of days." because it did the best job at telling your reader what your learning and how it affects people. What you can improve on is proof reading some of your work and maybe adding some more of your own insights in your work. Besides that good job.
To Lucas (Group Member):
Lucas,
You did a really good job at finding all the research that you found and incorporating it into the work that we have been doing in class. You found a lot of good information to support your idea and the visual that you have at the top of your project is also very helpful to understanding what you wrote, you have a lot of food insights and it is something that makes me think a lot more about the situation then I normally would. There are a lot of good things that you have done and I am not quite sure what you could do to improve besides just always adding more insights even though you have a lot. This is a great blog and its easy to see how much effort you put into this good job.
To John (Group Member):
I liked your speech in class and it was something I didn't think about the entire unit until you did this project. I like the way you structured your post and the idea behind it. You also use evidence from the museum is a nice alternative to the internet research that most of us have done. I think on of the best lines you have on your still life post is, " It is important to analyze through the illness & dying lens and criticizing these reflections of society in culture just as it is to criticize McDonald’s advertising through a lens critical of American food ways for one general reason" because you start to attempt to connect two of our units and i like the statement that you use to wrap everything up. This was a good post.
To Ruben:
I think after you speech reading this now, I am better able to understand what you were talking about. I picked to comment on your blog because I actually liked the idea that you had because it was sort of like Amber and how there can be abuse in nursing homes because of neglect but your post is kind of the reverse of this because you talk about how you visit your grand parents. I think something you could have talked more about is what your grandparents thought and why you think you have to go visit your grandparents. You have some good ideas but I think you could have talked some more about your experiences.
To Richie:
I think you had a simple speech but it gave a brief idea of what your project was in its entirety. The reason that I wanted to comment on your blog is because it is kind of related to mine although yours is more of your experiences, I wanted to focus on my mother because she had a lot more experience like this. You do a good job at coming up with an idea that ties back to the dominant social practices we have been learning about and the idea of terminal illness also connects back to My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid. Good Post.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Homework 30- History Project
Christopher R 1/14/11
For my project I decided to do some research, and interview my mom about the deaths she had in her family and the hereditary cancer that has plagued her family. I did research on some of the cancer numbers and ask her how she feels about it. How it connects to her family, and how it connects to her personally.
Question: Which help insurance company do you use?
Answer: Aetna US Health Care
Question: During the course of the unit, our class studied health insurance companies and found out some companies deny insurance because someone is too much of a health risk. How did you pick this health insurance and was it difficult?
Answer: I read up on what Aetna was offering, and I wanted to consider where the doctors were located, I considered the co-payments of the plan as well. My health insurance was through my job and we have to pick a medical plan every year. They don’t ask you questions like if you’re sick. The job pays part of it and we pay part of it. I have a family plan so you are also under it.
Question: How many people in our family have a major illness?
Answer: My sister has high blood pressure and asthma, my sister Vivian has diabetes. My sister Madie was diagnosed with high blood pressure and colon cancer. My sister Shirley had breast cancer but has been cancer free for over twenty years. She also has high blood pressure. My mom has heart trouble and high blood pressure, and my sister Glenda has high blood pressure. I myself have asthma.
Question: What are some deaths you have experienced in your life?
Answer: Many people older than me have died in my family. My father had bladder cancer. My aunt Vick had stomach cancer, my aunt Lucille had cancer. My mother had two brothers who died from other diseases; two of my uncles had liver problems from drinking too much. My brother died from renal failure. I had a brother named Tyree who died from natural causes. One of my uncles named Peter died from something I find kind of funny, he found a snake on the side of the road cooked it and ate it. The venom in the snake killed him. Then my best friend Denise died over a long period of time. She had breast cancer and had mastectomy on her breast. She became cancer free for ten years, but the cancer returned in her lungs. It traveled up to her brain and blinded her for a couple of days. She was on chemo therapy and radiation, but the doctors said one cell always managed to escape. I had a friend named Yvonne died from leukemia which is a cancer in the blood system.
Question: I would we have a lot of illness in your family, and what do you think lead to this?
Answer: I guess the way we eat. Which included a lot of fried foods; this is something we would eat a lot when we were younger. Our parents gave us a lot of fried foods and back then these illnesses weren’t as televised. We would eat freshly grown food from the garden, and now a day there are a lot of foods with unknown chemicals. It was different from when I was younger were people would sell fresh beans, fresh peas, fresh corn, fresh greens. People would kill their own animals and clean the animals that they had on the farm and sell it to different people in our neighborhood. There were a lot of things from the farms of people who were local. Now there are a lot of people who want money so they grow there food by using a lot of chemicals. I think this is what causes a lot of the disease we have now. Where I grew up people died from old age, there weren’t the diseases that are prevalent now.
Question: How doe witnessing all this death change your view on illness and drying?
Answer: It doesn’t change my perspective because that was there way that God had intended them to die. So we never know how we are going to die.
Question: What actions do you do to take care of yourself to lower the risk of getting cancer?
Answer: I have to go twice a year to take a mammogram (X-ray film of the soft tissue of the breast), and I have to go to the oncologist who is doctor that specializes in cancer. She checks my breast. I go to the GYN doctor for a pap smear which is a good way of checking for cancer in the uterus. My regular physician gives me a once a year checkup. I have been through a colonoscopy. They haven't found anything and I have to go back every five years.
Question: If you were ill would you rather have everything done to keep you alive even if it wouldn’t be guaranteed to make you completely better and would you rather die in a hospital or at home?
Answer: I would like to have everything done to keep me alive. I would rather die in a hospital then at home because there are more people to give you care at the hospitals and they do anything to keep you comfortable whereas you would be a burden on someone else at home.
Question: What do you think about the harmful treatments offered for cancer?
Answer: All of the treatments they have for cancer make you even sicker. All the radiation kills most of the cancer but there is usually one cell left that goes somewhere else, so all it really is, is chasing the cancer around the body.
Question: What do you plan to do when you stop working (Retirement Plan)?
Answer: Once I retire, I retire from the bank where I work. I want to become an event planner, such as weddings, and making cakes for weddings and other events. I want to go in business for myself and work when I feel like working instead of have to go to work. I have a 401 K plan.
Question: Do you think you have good eating habits, do you drink a lot?
Answer: My eating habits can be much better than they are. Lose some weight, exercise. I plan to lose weight, by cutting back on what I eat and changing my eating habits, then try to do some more excerise.
Question: According to many of the treatments to prevent cancer can be harmful, do you think exercise and eating right makes more sense than clinical treatments?
Answer: I agree that most of the clinical treatments can make you worse. I think the doctors sometimes try to experiment with you because they don’t really know what they are doing. In fact I think they have medicines that keep you coming back to the doctor.
Question: You do all of the main characteristics that are recommended for preventing cancer, what do you think you can suggest to family?
Answer: Change the eating habits, exercise, and that’s it. Lose weight.
Footnotes:
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8255685/New-Genetic-Test-for-Severe-Childhood-Diseases.html
• http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-topics/prevention-and-screening/hereditary-cancer-syndromes/index.html
• http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25264
• U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group. United States Cancer Statistics: 1999–2007 Incidence and Mortality Web-based Report. Atlanta (GA): Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Cancer Institute; 2010. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/uscs.
• http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics.jsp
• http://news.myjoyonline.com/ladiescorner/201101/59186.asp
• http://www.buzzle.com/articles/37000-cancer-patients-will-die-without-health-insurance.html
• http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20071220/no-health-insurance-dims-cancer-fate
• http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-prevention/CA00024
• http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/healthprofessional
• http://www.who.int/cancer/prevention/en/
• http://www.13.waisays.com/cancer.htm
* Question I didn’t want to ask: Having weight problems, previous eating problems, hereditary cancer, how safe do you feel?
For my project I decided to do some research, and interview my mom about the deaths she had in her family and the hereditary cancer that has plagued her family. I did research on some of the cancer numbers and ask her how she feels about it. How it connects to her family, and how it connects to her personally.
Question: Which help insurance company do you use?
Answer: Aetna US Health Care
Question: During the course of the unit, our class studied health insurance companies and found out some companies deny insurance because someone is too much of a health risk. How did you pick this health insurance and was it difficult?
Answer: I read up on what Aetna was offering, and I wanted to consider where the doctors were located, I considered the co-payments of the plan as well. My health insurance was through my job and we have to pick a medical plan every year. They don’t ask you questions like if you’re sick. The job pays part of it and we pay part of it. I have a family plan so you are also under it.
Question: How many people in our family have a major illness?
Answer: My sister has high blood pressure and asthma, my sister Vivian has diabetes. My sister Madie was diagnosed with high blood pressure and colon cancer. My sister Shirley had breast cancer but has been cancer free for over twenty years. She also has high blood pressure. My mom has heart trouble and high blood pressure, and my sister Glenda has high blood pressure. I myself have asthma.
Question: What are some deaths you have experienced in your life?
Answer: Many people older than me have died in my family. My father had bladder cancer. My aunt Vick had stomach cancer, my aunt Lucille had cancer. My mother had two brothers who died from other diseases; two of my uncles had liver problems from drinking too much. My brother died from renal failure. I had a brother named Tyree who died from natural causes. One of my uncles named Peter died from something I find kind of funny, he found a snake on the side of the road cooked it and ate it. The venom in the snake killed him. Then my best friend Denise died over a long period of time. She had breast cancer and had mastectomy on her breast. She became cancer free for ten years, but the cancer returned in her lungs. It traveled up to her brain and blinded her for a couple of days. She was on chemo therapy and radiation, but the doctors said one cell always managed to escape. I had a friend named Yvonne died from leukemia which is a cancer in the blood system.
Question: I would we have a lot of illness in your family, and what do you think lead to this?
Answer: I guess the way we eat. Which included a lot of fried foods; this is something we would eat a lot when we were younger. Our parents gave us a lot of fried foods and back then these illnesses weren’t as televised. We would eat freshly grown food from the garden, and now a day there are a lot of foods with unknown chemicals. It was different from when I was younger were people would sell fresh beans, fresh peas, fresh corn, fresh greens. People would kill their own animals and clean the animals that they had on the farm and sell it to different people in our neighborhood. There were a lot of things from the farms of people who were local. Now there are a lot of people who want money so they grow there food by using a lot of chemicals. I think this is what causes a lot of the disease we have now. Where I grew up people died from old age, there weren’t the diseases that are prevalent now.
Question: How doe witnessing all this death change your view on illness and drying?
Answer: It doesn’t change my perspective because that was there way that God had intended them to die. So we never know how we are going to die.
Question: What actions do you do to take care of yourself to lower the risk of getting cancer?
Answer: I have to go twice a year to take a mammogram (X-ray film of the soft tissue of the breast), and I have to go to the oncologist who is doctor that specializes in cancer. She checks my breast. I go to the GYN doctor for a pap smear which is a good way of checking for cancer in the uterus. My regular physician gives me a once a year checkup. I have been through a colonoscopy. They haven't found anything and I have to go back every five years.
Question: If you were ill would you rather have everything done to keep you alive even if it wouldn’t be guaranteed to make you completely better and would you rather die in a hospital or at home?
Answer: I would like to have everything done to keep me alive. I would rather die in a hospital then at home because there are more people to give you care at the hospitals and they do anything to keep you comfortable whereas you would be a burden on someone else at home.
Question: What do you think about the harmful treatments offered for cancer?
Answer: All of the treatments they have for cancer make you even sicker. All the radiation kills most of the cancer but there is usually one cell left that goes somewhere else, so all it really is, is chasing the cancer around the body.
Question: What do you plan to do when you stop working (Retirement Plan)?
Answer: Once I retire, I retire from the bank where I work. I want to become an event planner, such as weddings, and making cakes for weddings and other events. I want to go in business for myself and work when I feel like working instead of have to go to work. I have a 401 K plan.
Question: Do you think you have good eating habits, do you drink a lot?
Answer: My eating habits can be much better than they are. Lose some weight, exercise. I plan to lose weight, by cutting back on what I eat and changing my eating habits, then try to do some more excerise.
Question: According to many of the treatments to prevent cancer can be harmful, do you think exercise and eating right makes more sense than clinical treatments?
Answer: I agree that most of the clinical treatments can make you worse. I think the doctors sometimes try to experiment with you because they don’t really know what they are doing. In fact I think they have medicines that keep you coming back to the doctor.
Question: You do all of the main characteristics that are recommended for preventing cancer, what do you think you can suggest to family?
Answer: Change the eating habits, exercise, and that’s it. Lose weight.
Footnotes:
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8255685/New-Genetic-Test-for-Severe-Childhood-Diseases.html
• http://www.mdanderson.org/patient-and-cancer-information/cancer-information/cancer-topics/prevention-and-screening/hereditary-cancer-syndromes/index.html
• http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25264
• U.S. Cancer Statistics Working Group. United States Cancer Statistics: 1999–2007 Incidence and Mortality Web-based Report. Atlanta (GA): Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Cancer Institute; 2010. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/uscs.
• http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics.jsp
• http://news.myjoyonline.com/ladiescorner/201101/59186.asp
• http://www.buzzle.com/articles/37000-cancer-patients-will-die-without-health-insurance.html
• http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20071220/no-health-insurance-dims-cancer-fate
• http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-prevention/CA00024
• http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/prevention/breast/healthprofessional
• http://www.who.int/cancer/prevention/en/
• http://www.13.waisays.com/cancer.htm
* Question I didn’t want to ask: Having weight problems, previous eating problems, hereditary cancer, how safe do you feel?
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Homework 29
Christopher R
The health care in the United States is organized by having health insurance companies getting paid by the people who are clients of the health insurance company. When the people who are paying this money become sick the health insurance company uses the money to give the hospital giving the person paying the health insurance free care. The materials that the doctors use can also be paid for by the health insurance companies. HMO’s are a type of health plan where the person gets the financial coverage based on the doctors who agree to the guidelines and restrictions of the HMO provider. In the earlier years of health insurance, “Justin Kimball had the idea for saving hospitals financially…to approach his old colleagues with an offer…provide 3 days of care to teachers willing to monthly pay 50 cent.” (Cohn, 8) Then the creation of blue cross became about with hospitals in New Jersey and Sacramento which insured working people, and members of fraternal societies, totaling up to 2.8 million people in 1938.
People who are ill and dying are usually put in hospitals and nursing homes so the people who are ill and dying aren’t always seen by people who are not doctors and nurses. A lot of the time while in these hospitals people who are very sick and dying are given medications and treatments to try to keep them alive. Before being sick some people say when they are in a state of unconsciousness and near death they wouldn’t want to be resuscitated but it isn’t always clear if the doctor should stick to this. There is technology that can help these people and it is up to the doctor whether to try to keep these people alive but at the same time this technology can put patients through unwanted pain. With these new forms of keeping the heart beating it can lead to having people experience unwanted ways of dying and prolonging the inevitable death. However a study called SUPPORT done by two universities shows that “Large percentages of people do not necessarily want their future treatment to be determined by previously written documents” (Kaufman 25).
Families are given the choice try to revive the person who is ill or keep them living, opposed to letting them die. Where some of technology may work and keep the person alive, it can just prolong the death instead of making them better. “52 percent of participating physicians felt that CPR should be offered to all patients regardless of its potential despite a hospital policy allowing them to do otherwise”(Kaufman 28). Although there are alternatives to trying to keep these people alive it comes down to the way the family and the doctor feels. The ill or dying person can’t always speak for themselves and it becomes the job of the physician to say if they want to or not.
“By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human” (Goffman 7). People who are sick and dying are usually kept in hospitals behinds white walls where they are unable to be seen. Someone who is sick and dying is almost always someone who can’t take care of themselves and it is a human expectation to be able to take care of yourself at one point in a person’s life. Usually not being able to take care of yourself has a connotation of being a child, so being an adult unable to take care of yourself is not human like. Then there is the physical appearance of the person who is sick and dying. Like Beth shared about her husband, he looked very different and his face was very different. Not looking a certain way also gives people who are sick and dying a not human like quality. This can be one of the main reasons people who are sick and dying are kept behind the white walls of a hospital. They are given this stigma which makes them almost not human.
A nightmarish atrocity is explored in the documentary by Michael Moore entitled Sicko. This film looks at the people who fall through the cracks of the health insurance companies. There are many people who are unable to claim health insurance because health insurers see them as to much of a risk. People who are overweight, people who are unweight, people with pre-existing medical histories are all subject to denial for health insurance because they might cost the companies more money than other people. The film compares the stories of people who have been mistreated by insurance companies and lost family members from lack of insurance to the countries with health care for everyone. The countries the film focuses on are England and France. These countries are glamorized by flaunting a longer average life expectancy and benefits of having health care for everyone. No one pays, and no one can be turned away from a hospital.
Footnotes:
Staff of Washington Post. Landmark. Publick Affairs. New York. 2010
Cohn, Jonathan. Sick. Harper Collins. NY. 2007
Goffman, Erving. STIGMA: NOTES ON THE MANAGEMENT SPOLIED IDENTITY. Prentice Hall. NJ 1963
Kaufman, Sharon. And A Time To Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. Simon & Schuster. NY 2005.
The health care in the United States is organized by having health insurance companies getting paid by the people who are clients of the health insurance company. When the people who are paying this money become sick the health insurance company uses the money to give the hospital giving the person paying the health insurance free care. The materials that the doctors use can also be paid for by the health insurance companies. HMO’s are a type of health plan where the person gets the financial coverage based on the doctors who agree to the guidelines and restrictions of the HMO provider. In the earlier years of health insurance, “Justin Kimball had the idea for saving hospitals financially…to approach his old colleagues with an offer…provide 3 days of care to teachers willing to monthly pay 50 cent.” (Cohn, 8) Then the creation of blue cross became about with hospitals in New Jersey and Sacramento which insured working people, and members of fraternal societies, totaling up to 2.8 million people in 1938.
People who are ill and dying are usually put in hospitals and nursing homes so the people who are ill and dying aren’t always seen by people who are not doctors and nurses. A lot of the time while in these hospitals people who are very sick and dying are given medications and treatments to try to keep them alive. Before being sick some people say when they are in a state of unconsciousness and near death they wouldn’t want to be resuscitated but it isn’t always clear if the doctor should stick to this. There is technology that can help these people and it is up to the doctor whether to try to keep these people alive but at the same time this technology can put patients through unwanted pain. With these new forms of keeping the heart beating it can lead to having people experience unwanted ways of dying and prolonging the inevitable death. However a study called SUPPORT done by two universities shows that “Large percentages of people do not necessarily want their future treatment to be determined by previously written documents” (Kaufman 25).
Families are given the choice try to revive the person who is ill or keep them living, opposed to letting them die. Where some of technology may work and keep the person alive, it can just prolong the death instead of making them better. “52 percent of participating physicians felt that CPR should be offered to all patients regardless of its potential despite a hospital policy allowing them to do otherwise”(Kaufman 28). Although there are alternatives to trying to keep these people alive it comes down to the way the family and the doctor feels. The ill or dying person can’t always speak for themselves and it becomes the job of the physician to say if they want to or not.
“By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human” (Goffman 7). People who are sick and dying are usually kept in hospitals behinds white walls where they are unable to be seen. Someone who is sick and dying is almost always someone who can’t take care of themselves and it is a human expectation to be able to take care of yourself at one point in a person’s life. Usually not being able to take care of yourself has a connotation of being a child, so being an adult unable to take care of yourself is not human like. Then there is the physical appearance of the person who is sick and dying. Like Beth shared about her husband, he looked very different and his face was very different. Not looking a certain way also gives people who are sick and dying a not human like quality. This can be one of the main reasons people who are sick and dying are kept behind the white walls of a hospital. They are given this stigma which makes them almost not human.
A nightmarish atrocity is explored in the documentary by Michael Moore entitled Sicko. This film looks at the people who fall through the cracks of the health insurance companies. There are many people who are unable to claim health insurance because health insurers see them as to much of a risk. People who are overweight, people who are unweight, people with pre-existing medical histories are all subject to denial for health insurance because they might cost the companies more money than other people. The film compares the stories of people who have been mistreated by insurance companies and lost family members from lack of insurance to the countries with health care for everyone. The countries the film focuses on are England and France. These countries are glamorized by flaunting a longer average life expectancy and benefits of having health care for everyone. No one pays, and no one can be turned away from a hospital.
Footnotes:
Staff of Washington Post. Landmark. Publick Affairs. New York. 2010
Cohn, Jonathan. Sick. Harper Collins. NY. 2007
Goffman, Erving. STIGMA: NOTES ON THE MANAGEMENT SPOLIED IDENTITY. Prentice Hall. NJ 1963
Kaufman, Sharon. And A Time To Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. Simon & Schuster. NY 2005.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
HW 28
From Jasper: I thought the best part of your post was: "It could probably be the worse place that anyone would want to visit and have to see someone they love. A nursing home reminds me of a hospital but a couple times worse because when people go to the hospital the idea is people in the hospital get better. When people go to nursing homes the idea is that they have some kind of sickness where they can’t take care of themselves and usually they are elderly so they are close to death anyway." I think this was the best part because it brought up the point of hope and you have hope that people will get out of the hospital and go home, but at a nursing home this is where they're going to stay. Even though people die in hospitals you see a hospital as a place where people are treated and can leave. Opposed to a nursing home which is the place they are at waiting to die at. There's no getting better and leaving this place
I didn't get comments from my group, and I commented on Lucas' blog but the website says "waiting for approval to reveal comment"
John didn't post homework 27.
Jasper didn't post homework 27.
I didn't get comments from my group, and I commented on Lucas' blog but the website says "waiting for approval to reveal comment"
John didn't post homework 27.
Jasper didn't post homework 27.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Visit an Unwell Person
Christopher R
This is not a visit to an unwell person over the break but the time which I visited an unwell person over thanksgiving break.
It could probably be the worse place that anyone would want to visit and have to see someone they love. A nursing home reminds me of a hospital but a couple times worse because when people go to the hospital the idea is people in the hospital get better. When people go to nursing homes the idea is that they have some kind of sickness where they can’t take care of themselves and usually they are elderly so they are close to death anyway. Hospitals can be viewed as a place of protection whereas a nursing home is viewed as a place (very little) hope. Walking through the nursing home to get to your loved one is the worst part of the experience. It feels like a jail, the people are stuck in their rooms with the door open and it’s extremely hard to reframe from looking. Everyone seems so helpless and the way that they stare out the door as people walk by gives off the idea that they don’t want to be there. After viewing all these people being in a very unhealthy state, made me feel like I could become sick aswell by association. It isn’t very often when you see a lot of sick people all at one time. Walking down the halls of the nursing home knowing that more than a few people have died there is also uncomfortable because being around unhealthy people is usually a title given to nurses and doctors.
“Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high” said the woman in the wheel chair that smiled from ear to ear but revealed no teeth. Being surrounded by sick people made me feel as if they were going to die sooner than later. It seemed like they were already dead. The things that people are predominantly able to do such as walk, talk, have “sane thoughts” is what you start to do at young ages so not being able to do this makes it seem like they are less than human. The nursing home was more of a prison of people in very bad circumstances, compared to the hospital where the idea is to go to recover and get treatment. Then after seeing other sick people who are complete strangers I got to see the person who I actually came to visit. You have to watch as they struggle to do things that came naturally before. I couldn’t count the amount of times she said she had recently seen someone who in actuality had been dead for years. There are memories of the person and all the things they use to do, and these are compared to who they are now, unable to take care of themselves and having many physical and mental difference makes you feel helpless.
She was in a wheelchair, unable to move her legs at all; she had a heart condition where she needed to have a peacemaker. Her face became drastically darker, all of her skin under her neck became tough, she wasn’t able to eat and sleep. In fact at one point it seemed she was so close to death because she wasn’t able to talk and her son tried to take life insurance on her so in case she did die he would get all the money. This was probably the worse I have ever seen her, someone who was able to take care of 9 children and a husband and herself, is now the same person who is unable to things on her own and is around the kitchen on holidays asking how she can help.
Then I noticed the people that work there are always positive, the calendar outside of the room has a list of events, these people who to me come off as dead are scheduled to play kickball (even the ones in the wheel chairs) go to dances, attend church and do other activities I would never imagine they could do or would want to do. Why would an old woman with a heart condition wake up and want to play kick ball or dance. But as I think about it while writing this it makes me realize that if people who were in nursing homes went there and just waited to die the time between them arriving and actually dying would also be a lot like death. Giving people the options to do things they use to do gives them a chance to continue living instead of a room to count down the days until death.
This is not a visit to an unwell person over the break but the time which I visited an unwell person over thanksgiving break.
It could probably be the worse place that anyone would want to visit and have to see someone they love. A nursing home reminds me of a hospital but a couple times worse because when people go to the hospital the idea is people in the hospital get better. When people go to nursing homes the idea is that they have some kind of sickness where they can’t take care of themselves and usually they are elderly so they are close to death anyway. Hospitals can be viewed as a place of protection whereas a nursing home is viewed as a place (very little) hope. Walking through the nursing home to get to your loved one is the worst part of the experience. It feels like a jail, the people are stuck in their rooms with the door open and it’s extremely hard to reframe from looking. Everyone seems so helpless and the way that they stare out the door as people walk by gives off the idea that they don’t want to be there. After viewing all these people being in a very unhealthy state, made me feel like I could become sick aswell by association. It isn’t very often when you see a lot of sick people all at one time. Walking down the halls of the nursing home knowing that more than a few people have died there is also uncomfortable because being around unhealthy people is usually a title given to nurses and doctors.
“Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high” said the woman in the wheel chair that smiled from ear to ear but revealed no teeth. Being surrounded by sick people made me feel as if they were going to die sooner than later. It seemed like they were already dead. The things that people are predominantly able to do such as walk, talk, have “sane thoughts” is what you start to do at young ages so not being able to do this makes it seem like they are less than human. The nursing home was more of a prison of people in very bad circumstances, compared to the hospital where the idea is to go to recover and get treatment. Then after seeing other sick people who are complete strangers I got to see the person who I actually came to visit. You have to watch as they struggle to do things that came naturally before. I couldn’t count the amount of times she said she had recently seen someone who in actuality had been dead for years. There are memories of the person and all the things they use to do, and these are compared to who they are now, unable to take care of themselves and having many physical and mental difference makes you feel helpless.
She was in a wheelchair, unable to move her legs at all; she had a heart condition where she needed to have a peacemaker. Her face became drastically darker, all of her skin under her neck became tough, she wasn’t able to eat and sleep. In fact at one point it seemed she was so close to death because she wasn’t able to talk and her son tried to take life insurance on her so in case she did die he would get all the money. This was probably the worse I have ever seen her, someone who was able to take care of 9 children and a husband and herself, is now the same person who is unable to things on her own and is around the kitchen on holidays asking how she can help.
Then I noticed the people that work there are always positive, the calendar outside of the room has a list of events, these people who to me come off as dead are scheduled to play kickball (even the ones in the wheel chairs) go to dances, attend church and do other activities I would never imagine they could do or would want to do. Why would an old woman with a heart condition wake up and want to play kick ball or dance. But as I think about it while writing this it makes me realize that if people who were in nursing homes went there and just waited to die the time between them arriving and actually dying would also be a lot like death. Giving people the options to do things they use to do gives them a chance to continue living instead of a room to count down the days until death.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Homework 26
Christopher R 12/27/10
1. The idea of death is kept in hospitals.
2. How you’re supposed to react to death.
3. The idea of whether or not children should be exposed to death in the family.
4. Death is something people don’t talk about.
5. A poor person in France can have a longer life than a rich person in the United States. (http://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/graph_month/life_expectancy_france/) (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=united+states+life+expectancy+graph#met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:USA:FRA)
I think Sicko was a good film to talk about the history of health insurance and the disadvantages that the health insurance companies have but it doesn’t really talk about the dominant social practices of death. I think the thing that helped the most was when Evan’s mother came in to speak about her personal experience. This is because when you have someone dictating to you about how they feel about death through a screen it aren’t as emotional or sentimental as when you are face to face with someone. Getting to hear the person as they sit right in front of you, and share something that is usually seen as a topic not to talk about there is more to be learned. Especially from my point of view, I have never had anyone close to me die and that shields me from the actual emotion that a death in the family could bring. It’s much easier to understand and sympathize with a person who you now, never see anything wrong with them and then hear about what they had to go through as they speak about death in their family.
The question that has gotten to me this whole unit is how you are supposed to act when someone close to you dies. There are so many different kinds of people in the world and to say that someone is supposed to act a certain way about someone else is perplexing. Personally I have been to a few funerals and some of them were the funerals of family members but I had never had never cried. At the funeral it seems like everyone feels they have to cry and most of the tears are exaggerated. People jumping around the church and falling to the floor is not a notion that will bring the dead person back so what’s the purpose of sobbing about their non-existence. Another question I had is what the origin of a formal funeral is, the actual purpose of a funeral because I feel like these two things would give me an idea of why so many people use funerals as a way of saying goodbye. If there is any other popular form of remembering the dead and if so why isn’t it as televised? I think the way we can go about finding this would be more research but as for the way people are supposed to act I think it has a lot to do with what people see in the media.
1. The idea of death is kept in hospitals.
2. How you’re supposed to react to death.
3. The idea of whether or not children should be exposed to death in the family.
4. Death is something people don’t talk about.
5. A poor person in France can have a longer life than a rich person in the United States. (http://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/graph_month/life_expectancy_france/) (http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=united+states+life+expectancy+graph#met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:USA:FRA)
I think Sicko was a good film to talk about the history of health insurance and the disadvantages that the health insurance companies have but it doesn’t really talk about the dominant social practices of death. I think the thing that helped the most was when Evan’s mother came in to speak about her personal experience. This is because when you have someone dictating to you about how they feel about death through a screen it aren’t as emotional or sentimental as when you are face to face with someone. Getting to hear the person as they sit right in front of you, and share something that is usually seen as a topic not to talk about there is more to be learned. Especially from my point of view, I have never had anyone close to me die and that shields me from the actual emotion that a death in the family could bring. It’s much easier to understand and sympathize with a person who you now, never see anything wrong with them and then hear about what they had to go through as they speak about death in their family.
The question that has gotten to me this whole unit is how you are supposed to act when someone close to you dies. There are so many different kinds of people in the world and to say that someone is supposed to act a certain way about someone else is perplexing. Personally I have been to a few funerals and some of them were the funerals of family members but I had never had never cried. At the funeral it seems like everyone feels they have to cry and most of the tears are exaggerated. People jumping around the church and falling to the floor is not a notion that will bring the dead person back so what’s the purpose of sobbing about their non-existence. Another question I had is what the origin of a formal funeral is, the actual purpose of a funeral because I feel like these two things would give me an idea of why so many people use funerals as a way of saying goodbye. If there is any other popular form of remembering the dead and if so why isn’t it as televised? I think the way we can go about finding this would be more research but as for the way people are supposed to act I think it has a lot to do with what people see in the media.
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