HW 19 - Family Perspectives on Illness & Dying

I remember my dad once telling me about the placebo effect - that some medicines helps people simply because they think it will help them. At the time, I had a fever, so this annoyed me to no end. However, after having asked about how his parents handled illness, I now understand why he was so against taking medicine for minor health problems.

My father's main memory of illness in his family was when he was five, and his mom broke her back. The family had been about to go on a trip, and they almost canceled it. In the end, they decided to go - she made herself a bed in the backseat of the car, and "toughed it out". She could only stand up or lie down, so when they stopped to eat at a restaurant, she had to eat standing up.

"Toughing it out" seemed to be the general prescription for any sickness my dad dealt with as a kid (mumps, chicken pox, etc), and the thing he usually told me to do when I was sick. When I talked with my mom, she seemed to have a different perspective on it, saying that without some medicines (antibiotics) she probably wouldn't be alive - she had measles and scarlet fever as a kid, which were serious illnesses at the time. She added that sometimes, there really isn't any other option than to take medicine - even if it's just a headache, would you rather suffer or feel better in half an hour after taking an Advil?

I tend to fall somewhere in between - if I'm not feeling well, I usually try to get some rest and drink water before I take medicine. In the United States, prescription medicine is heavily advertised on TV and in magazines, and I think that this makes people very quick to take medicine for every little thing, and they tend to abuse it. This also makes medicine less effective, because viruses evolve to become resistant to antibiotics, which is why there are always new strains of viruses, like swine flu (H1N1).

When I approached the subject of dying, my mom said that she doesn't think people ever really acknowledge the fact that they're going to die - they're in denial. I agree with this, and I think this stops people from really living their lives - maybe if they realized that they are indeed going to die one day, they would make more of the time they actually have (cliche, I know), and try to live happier lives.

HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

 I spent thanksgiving at my aunt's house, with her, my cousin, my dad, and my little brother (My dad's side of the family - see the "Your Family's Foodways" post). Aside from my little brother, they are all extremely health conscious, in a way that seems to scream "Look at me, eating my bran flakes with wheat germ on top for breakfast! My healthy choices demand recognition!" So it was interesting to see them all try to navigate a holiday that is centered around eating what one might call "normal food".

They did it though. No matter what it was we were making, there was a way to make it healthy. No sugar in the cranberry-orange sauce, or in the pumpkin-sweet potato pies (It was decided by my aunt that since pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie are basically the same thing, we may as well just mix them together and make them like that. No comment).  No milk or cream in the mashed potatoes, which literally were just mashed potatoes, with the skin and everything. Thankfully, the turkey, being pretty healthy as it was, was left alone, although I was repeatedly encouraged while eating it to remove the skin.

This relates to illness, because no matter how many disparaging remarks I make about my family's eating habits, the fact is, they don't get sick that often (And even when they do, there's some all natural way to take care of it: "When I feel like I have a cold, I just take a vitamin C and get some sleep!", my aunt said pointedly to my brother when he went to buy cold medicine).

However, no matter how healthy the food is, Thanksgiving is still a pretty sedentary holiday. Supposedly there's something in turkey that makes people feel sleepy, so I guess that would explain it. Because the day doesn't call for much physical activity, it seems more anti-body then body-centered. 

HW 12 - Outline (Continued)

I found an article in Newsweek relating to the food unit (it includes photos of people's refrigerators):

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/22/what-food-says-about-class-in-america.html

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

I guess my first experience with illness and dying was when I was in first or second grade, and I didn't want to go to school, so I said I didn't feel well. However, both of my parents had to work (and I wasn't really sick), so I ended up going with my dad to the hospice where he was working at the time. A hospice is where people go when they know they're going to die soon, so that they have somewhere to stay at the end of their life. At some places their families can stay there too, but in the case of this place it was more like a hospital, where people just visited.

It definitely looked like a hospital, maybe a little smaller - there weren't any of those never-ending hallways that hospitals seem to have. I remember the walls were painted this pastel shade of yellow, and my dad lead me down a hallway to a room that had a sofa and a TV. He left me in there with one of the nurses because he had to go see someone, and for a while I was just in that room watching TV.

It was dark in there, except that the door out to the hallway was open, and the TV was on. There was a brown blanket on the sofa, one that looked like someone had knitted it - it seemed like one of those things that is made and then passed down to children, and their children, and their children. After a couple hours or so some of the patients staying there came in to watch TV, and a few minutes later my dad came to get me. I was glad to leave, because I had been worried someone would try to talk to me, and I wouldn't know what to say.

Later that same year one of my dad's friends was staying in a hospital, and we went to visit him a lot. One of those times me and my brother were both there, and my dad was talking to him for a long time, and he noticed that we were bored. Next time he gave my dad his credit card and told him to go buy a TV, so that we would have something to do when our dad was visiting him. A couple weeks later he died, and left us the TV.

Looking back on these experiences, this all seems kind of odd (the fact that I was there for all this) - for some reason this all reminds me of an Addams Family cartoon (I guess because those cartoons have the theme of children being involved in situations they shouldn't be). However, I still don't see illness and dying as bad things, mostly because they have to happen. People have to get sick sometimes so that their bodies can build up a resistance to different pathogens, and they have to die so that there are enough resources on the planet to support everyone - if no one ever died, we would probably all die.

Questions:

Does the availability of health care (or lack thereof) in a country affect people's attitude toward death?

How did ancient cultures/societies approach illness and death?

Why are illness and death not widely discussed (outside of the health care debate)? Just to add onto that, how come people talk about fixing the health care system all the time, but no one ever discusses what's going to happen to all the veterans of the Iraq war, many of whom probably have serious illnesses or injuries?