HW 29

1) Terminal Illness
Facing a terminal illness can prove to be difficult because we wonder why such a terrible thing can happen to such a strong-willed person. The truth is we all go through our own battles, and those battles are only there to make us stronger. In the book “My brother”, by Jamaica Kincaid, Jamaica returned to her home of Antigua after her brother was diagnosed with a terminal illness, AIDS. Jamaica said, “But his life was real, not yet a part of history; his reality was that he was dead but still alive; his reality was that he had a disease called AIDS (My Brother, Pg. 95). Jamaica didn’t understand how her brother could get AIDS at such a young age, because to her it seemed like his life was just beginning, “his life was real, not yet a part of history.” Many people who have suffered from a terminal illness have never been able to live their lives and create history, in a sense, because they were diagnosed at an unexpected time.

Another example of a patient facing a terminal illness was Beth’s husband Erik. She met her husband and they feel in love but the problems began when he began getting sick but like so many people, he didn’t go to the doctor about the problems he was facing. After finally going to the doctor he was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer. The family went into oblivion because no one could believe Erik was facing cancer, “he was a good father, husband, artist, and this wasn’t going to beat him” (Beth’s Presentation). Erik fought this cancer with everything he had until the end when it was his time to go. The point is when people are diagnosed with terminal illnesses they go about living their lives doing everything that makes them happy, but why don’t we do those things now. We don’t know when our time will come so we should be prepared.


2) The process of dying
In Near Death, a documentary was done about the background of death in the hospitals. One of the doctor’s kept saying that “it’s in god’s hands,” this meant that if they decided to take the ventilator off they will pull the plug because he will be brain dead anyway and if he died it was in god’s will. Sometimes this idea is tossed around but people don’t understand the true meaning of god’s will. Everything happens for a reason but when our time comes we will die, there will be no other way to avoid death when our time comes. This is another issue that presented itself in the movie, the issue of consent and its connection to death. In one case a patient was getting worse as each day progressed and his lungs were too weak to work by themselves, and even with help they wouldn’t get better. The doctors had to come up with the decision of whether they should just let the patient die or keep him alive just a couple more days. Doctors take an oath that they must do everything they can to make sure a patient lives but they must also decide whether to help that patient who is near death or help a child suffering from a minor illness.

Death is something that is avoided, ignored until the right time has come to die. “Today, more Americans die in hospitals than anywhere else, and the most frequent response to critical illness there is to try and stave off death with the most sophisticated technological means available (American Hospitals, Pg.25) More people have died in hospitals than anywhere else, and hospitals should be the one place where you feel you can be supported or fought for until death. In Near death, while the patient was dying instead of thinking about how he was going to stay alive all he could think about was what he did in the past. He began reflecting on his life and whether he believed he lived a happy life. When we are close to death something we do is think back on everything we ever did wondering if we would do something different.

3) Isolation
The sick are regarded as people that don’t belong to our society. People have a stigma in which they feel they must bring up other attributes people possess and compare those undesirable attributes to their own skills and make that person look like they don’t belong. This is how illness is approached in our society. In “My brother”, by Jamaica Kincaid, Jamaica’s brother was isolated by many people after he got AIDS. “Stigma”, by Erving Goffman, reveals how critical we are of people with certain illnesses. A stigma is an attribute that people can’t change about themselves, but people hold themselves on a higher pedestal while regarding people with illnesses on a much lower pedestal. “A stigma then is really a kind of special relationship between attribute and stereotype…there are important attributes that almost everywhere in our society are discrediting” (Stigma, Pg. 4). People with some type of illness, say cancer for example will always be associated with their illness. Rather than looking at the person and not the illness, we look at the illness as the person.

Usually when old people are placed in a nursery it’s because we believe there are workers who can take better care of them than we can. In some cases this is true because when people are diagnosed with an illness or when they become dependent on others to eat, sleep, and do many other things it may be more difficult to care for them. In an old folk’s home, seniors will be around people who are facing a similar situation to theirs and they will be more able to connect with others rather than having no one who understands their situation.