HW#34

Thought bubbles:


-Question: Is it really morally correct to get married when your girlfriend is pregnant out out of a feeling of obligation?
-Different religions have different methods for pre birth and post birth
-Some couples(or women singularly) prefer natural births as opposed to hospital births.
-Different processes for pregnancy.
-Location of birth is very important to some people (i.e. underwater births, home births, etc)
-Dominant social practices behind childbirth include hospitals, drugs for pain and constant assistance that focuses on the mother such as meditation, mantras, yoga, soothing music,massages.
-Ambience during the birth is sometimes considered important b/c the baby should be born in a calm environment.
-Some women have c-sections because of natural causes,some have it for more selfish reasons like not ruining their vaginas.
Reflections & further thoughts:
-When my mother was pregnant with my sister she was forced to have a cesarian because of natural causes. Towards the end of the pregnancy my sister was not facing the correct way(head down facing the vagina) so she would not be able to come out. This is an example of a more normal reason than the hollywood actresses and models who get vaginal reconstruction surgery and what not to please their couple instead of giving the child a natural birth.
-When i was born my mother made the decision to get the epidural shot to not feel the birth at all as she describes it. As a side effect my mother now suffers from back pain on a semi-regular basis, which is something the doctors failed to mention when she was asked if she wanted the shots. Not only does this demonstrate the different precautions certain hospitals take but also the different level of attention that certain ethnicities receive at the hospital(at least during this time).

HW#30

What psychological effect does death have on the human mind before and after a traumatic experience?

          Some people associate the word trauma with physical pain and others with feelings; any sort of trauma is defined as making you feel unsafe or insecure after the event and as something that makes you feel insecure, but at what point of this potentially devastating experience does the human mind react and change in such a way that its perception of the outside world and experiences like their own become different?

         Of all the possible traumas a person can sustain I chose death as a core subject to focus on because of the unit as well as my personal affection towards those who have lost someone they love. To answer this complex question I decided to focus more on “real” evidence that I could interact with which in this case was a person. I also used evidence from other sources such as the internet and passages relating to my essential question.

Personally I find traumatic experiences to be something that no one should have to go through but at the same time I understand it is a part of life that forms people into who they are. I don’t want to confuse this idea with thinking that you are no one until you go through a traumatic experience but I find the two are very closely related in the sense that a large portion of you is directly affected by the experiences in your life. The experiences that we view as traumatic are often related to death and are usually the most damaging, many sources support this thought such as these lists that explain when trauma can occur and how to know if such an experience can be traumatic.

A stressful event is most likely to be traumatic if:

• It happened unexpectedly.
• You were unprepared for it.
• You felt powerless to prevent it.
• It happened repeatedly.
• Someone was intentionally cruel.
• It happened in childhood.

(Smith, Melinda, and Jeanne Segal, Healing Emotional and Psychological Trauma)

Other sources describe which experiences are the most traumatic but I will only show those directly related to death:

1. The discovery of a life-threatening illness or disabling condition, or other similar situations
2. Serious illness, especially when accompanied by very high fever
3. Hearing about violence to or sudden death of someone close
4. Physical assault, including rape, incest, molestation, domestic abuse and
   serious bodily harm

Þ    5.Serious accidents, such as automobile or other high-impact scenarios

Þ    6.Experiencing or witnessing horrific injury, carnage or fatalities

(Glenn, Marti, Trauma, Attachment, and Stress Disorders: Rethinking and Reworking Developmental Issues)

           I decided to put arrows next to two of these sources of trauma because they relate to my real evidence in a way that can potentially explain that why the person I interviewed feels towards death.

          Around the mid-1960’s my grandfather was 10 years old when he went through what is arguable the most traumatic experience of his life and quite possibly more traumatic than anything other people may experience. On a hot day in Colombia, my grandfather, his five brothers and his father decided to go for a hike in the steep mountains that were considered dangerous because of the FARC which are the Colombian communist party that have plagued the country for decades. While avoiding these counter-military groups, they encountered a large gap in the mountain that formed a sort of river a few hundred feet below. At this point in my grandfathers telling of the story, his eyes glazed over in such a manner that suggested crying but looked more as if pure anger or hate would soon spew from his eyes. As he continued he seemed to want to stop telling me the story and I also told him to stop if he didn’t feel well but I suppose he found some sort of consolation in telling me what can be looked at as HIS story because of how heavily it affected him. Facing the other side of this chasm and noticing a massive tree placed in between the two sides to form a makeshift bridge his brothers and his father decided to cross the tree like in some sort of bad adventure movie as my grandfather explained it. They all noticed how old the tree looked but decided to go forward completely disregarding the danger. Trailing behind of the group my grandfather watched as his brothers and fathers attempted to cross the tree; as he continues the most traumatic part of this story becomes obvious as my grandfather tells it because his voice cracks almost in unison with the crackling of the tree below their feet as it gave away under their combined weight before my grandfather set foot on it. He describes not knowing what to do and the feeling of hopelessness as he watched his brothers and father fall to their death. As he describes it, the walk back home was confusing and seemed as if the world around him was peeling away as he came to the realization of what had happened. Im not sure if this tremendous loss is more traumatic than what soon followed despite the fact that it has no actual death in it besides its mentioning.

          Through this grieving process, my grandfather changed into a person that he wishes he never was mostly due to his mother’s reaction to this loss. A 10 year old boy was forced to live with a mother that had lost it all as he had but used it in a selfish way that may have been more of a defense mechanism than an actual offense. Because of her misplaced hate, sadness and anger toward what happened, she turned to the only person who se could blame which was her son. While constantly blaming him for her pain she told him that she wished he had been the one who died instead of his brothers and father. He told me to keep in mind that 1 other of his brothers who was not present at the moment of the incident was still alive. I found it incredible how this one phrase changed his life so much more than the actual deaths. He also accentuated the fact that she has not, to this day, said sorry to him for what she said to him.

        After this saddening story I asked him how he looked at death when he was a young boy before incident. He told me that he was aware of it and he heard of people dying regularly but he didn’t think much of it. After the losses he tells me he became a shell of the person he once was as he was mentally abused by his mother on a daily basis because of her reaction to the loss. He looked a death as a person who he hated with every all of his power and that he hates to this day.

         Hearing this terrible story coming from an actual person and not from some sappy movie gave me a look into the human mind with no boundaries. On some levels I am glad that I learned this about our human nature and how we deal with things but I also wish that I had maintained that “innocence” that you have before you are forced to go through something like that and actually think of something to disturbing. Because of the time difference, my grandfather explained to me that before death was considered to be more normal because there was a lot less to do for someone sick or physically injured in such a way that death was unavoidable. Now death I much more terrible because we have thousands of things that we can do to draw out the process as much as we can so that we don’t have to lose any one which is a really selfish endeavor. If we had not made all of the advances in medicine and technology, how would we treat death today?

Citations

1. Smith, Melinda, and Jeanne Segal. "Healing Emotional and Psychological Trauma." SYMPTOMS, TREATMENT, AND RECOVERY Nov 8. n. pag.Helpguide.org. Web. <http://helpguide.org/mental/emotional_psychological_trauma.htm

2. Glenn, Marti, and . "Trauma, Attachment, and Stress Disorders: Rethinking and Reworking Developmental Issues." n. pag. Web.

HW#28

re: HW#27

 Amanda, I felt as if your most interesting line (to me) was, “...I was feeling much resentment towards Roberta. She was once a functioning person who could take care of herself in society, but now she relies on other people to take care of her, when she would be able to if she weren’t so disoriented or unfocused.” Because this focuses on illness and the feelings you may experience during it. Much like other things in our life, when we have feel as if we are left out or of loneliness, we direct our anger towards the most accessible thing which in this case is Roberta. I feel as if she is the easiest target because of her illness and weakness to put this anger on. My opinion itself also proves how other peoples sickness affect the way we look at them and think of them.

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HW#26

            The most important thing I learned from this unit was the ability to analyze all different aspects of death and the different point of views in a family that surround the person who is sick. The biggest source of information in this unit was Beth who had personal experience and endured it in the most natural way possible, that being her decisions to decline help, the grieving process, etc. Through her knowledge of death I learned about different effects that death has on people and how it affects the human mind. Because I would not have been able to learn these things otherwise (because I do not know anyone who has died or is dying) this opportunity was beyond valuable because of the insight it gave me into the “realm” of death that we all know and fear.

HW#25

Through Sicko, the main problems in our society such as lack of insurance and a working healthcare system are demonstrated as being destructive to the community around the person who is sick as well as themselves because of their inability to better themselves as a result of the limited care that very little United States citizens are given. Using several Americans and American families as examples to show the negative impact of denial of coverage is the most powerful way that I felt I could get across the depressing nature of these stories that are only a handful from the hundreds of thousands of American people that must go through this because they have a government and healthcare system that still believes in only maximizing profit instead of providing equal and high-quality care for all.

        Actually hearing someone say that we are one of the only countries that still has a healthcare system based on maximizing profit instead of saving lives, put into perspective what our lives mean to these people that we depend on to make our lives better. Because of this, I feel that a socialist healthcare system is a viable but should be treated more like a step in the right direction. As I heard more about our Health care providers “scandals” I realized that the only examples Mr. Moore gave were of people who are American citizens and have been denied coverage for whatever reason as well as the occasional exception such as the girl who got the hearing aid implants as a result of a threat to expose the company for what they have done.

         Why are there no examples of families such as my own that consist of two parents who are immigrants and have received fairly good healthcare throughout their lives in the states without so much as having to pay a co payment for a bill. Not only because my parents were not born here but also because of are exceptional treatment, I am driven to ask why Mr. Moore did not add examples such as these that are a sort of counter evidence to his argument that “all” Americans live terrible lives filled with debt and sadness.

HW#24

Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother, FSG, 1997

    This book is a biography of my life in Antigua as well as my life in the states and how I was affected by the sudden death of my brother whom I did not know much of but shared an interesting connection with.

    The overall theme is illness and death and any other problems that come along with that. I look at my brother’s death through my own eyes as well as through his, the way I think he felt about his illness. I also discuss our family and how they dealt with his death and how our geographical location could have influenced his health.

1.)    “...And the way she distanced herself from him caused him great pain...”(pg 163)

-         Whether or not the people you know distance themselves from you or try to make themselves closer, their motives are obvious because both mean the worst is in store.

2.)”... And he knew that they knew of his situation, and so their scorn (they did not hide it) must have been especially painful...”

- Some people do not go the extra mile to make the person who is sick feel comfortable which in some cases is the right thing to do instead of acting rude.

Knowing that at some point in my life I will be close to dying, I hope that people will not look at me with pity or hate the same way people look at Jamaica’s brother because that is truly a terrible way to die, knowing that people hate you. Dying alone with no one by your side, in my perspective is the same as not having anyone that really cares for you your entire life. If people truly care about you, how can they not be by your side when you die to console and make you feel better?

HW#23

Jamaica Kincaid, My Brother, FSG, 1997

Section 2 of My Brother:

The second part of this book focuses more on the brother’s perspective and how Jamaica thinks he may have felt during the process of his illness and finally his death if he was thinking at all during his final moments. A brief history on her brother is given and it allows the reader to get more of a feel of the brother’s personality and the way he went about doing things.

1.) “That night as he lay dying and calling the names of his brothers and his mother, he did not call my name, and I was neither glad nor sad about this.”

-  Because of the lack of a bond between her brother and herself, her brother not calling out her name, affected her in a way that she was not sure about also due to their relationship.

2.) “He had read in a novel written by me about a mother who had tried and tried and failed and failed to abort the third and last of her three male children. And when he was dying he asked me if that mother was his mother and if that child was himself...”

-  Despite his being a bit slow and uneducated he picked up on the fact that the story was about him. Although he had not mentioned it before for whatever reason before, his illness and inevitable death drove him to ask whether or not that story was about him.  

3.) A great sadness over came me, and the source of the sadness was the deep feeling I always had about him:  that he had died without ever understanding or knowing , or being able to let the world in which he lived know, who he was; that who he really was- not a single sense of identity  but all the complexities of who he was –he could not express fully: his fear of being laughed at, his fear of meeting with the scorn of the people he knew best were overwhelming and he could not live with all of it openly.”

- Full description of who her brother basically was and her thoughts on how he felt even though he was so well known and liked my many people.

     The depiction of death through the eyes of Jamaica Kincaid is one that I hope I never have to deal with because of its gruesomeness and the way she is forced to think about her brothers sadness and basically carry his weight because it was something he was never able to get rid of due to his position in society and/or his position in their home. The way she describes how she thinks about her brother is something that bothers me because it makes me wonder if death always causes these thoughts amongst friends and family.