Isolation
It seems practical, to check yourself into a hospital, once you have reached a phase in your life that needs much more attention and help, from the professionals. However, the moment you step into a hospital and label yourself, as the patient is also the moment you separate yourself from the world you had established your whole life. After visiting a nursing home and interacting with my parents’ friend I came to realize that although she was surrounded by others, who were going through the same problems feeling helpless and alone can still be an emotion experienced. In a building filled with hundreds of other isolated people you would think that they would mingle and interact but in many ways they seem to isolate themselves from each other.
While working in a hospital a few summers ago I often had to isolate myself from the patients. There were certain patients who were so sick that exposure to my germs or vise versa could kill them or expose me to something very dangerous. So whenever it was necessary for me to check on them I had to suit up in a mask, gloves and a gown. I remember thinking I looked like someone detaching a bomb. These people probably felt like they weren’t humans anymore, for their interactions with other breathing human beings was so sparingly. In Goffman’s STIGMA there becomes an understanding that even if you fight the disease you will always be thought of as the disease. “…someone with a particular blemish into someone with a record of having a particular blemish.” (Page 9) Your label will turn from fighter to survivor yet you continue to be isolated from our picture of normality.
Paying for Medical Care
Like most things in our life money seems to be a huge factor. This includes our health and the value of it. In Kaufman’s And A Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life she enlightens us with the disturbing yet true idea that “dying people are not wanted in medical institutions.” (Page 29) Medicare has a direct link to this problem as they are the ones usually paying for the dying peoples bills, through their cash flow they have the ability to determine who stays and who goes, literally speaking. Moore bashes our countries medical system and brings our attention to the rest of the western world in his film Sicko. We are given a look into what universal health care entails. Comparatively in Landmark Obama’s plan for health care is broken down for us, and gives us a picture into what a world without 45 million lacking coverage looks like. The way the medical system works unfortunately allows the life span to either decrease or increase. Even the poorest people in Britain are in better health than the richest person in America. (Sicko)
The Process of Dying
In many ways dying is much more complicated than simply living. We have to factor in many levels of issue. First off the issue of consent, which is dominantly focused on in Wiseman’s Near Death. Do they “let him fly…” or go against D.N.R. and try to save him the person from the end of it all? There is the question of dying in a hospital verses dying in your home. Living on a tube or just letting go. Factoring all of these in gets quite complicated. Our guest speaker gave us the approach of not getting hospitals involved at the end but just being with the person you love in the comfortableness of the home you created together. For those moments mean much more than watching someone fade in a cold room that has no connection to who you are as a person. For death is “the moment at which human control over human existence finds an outer limit.” (Anthony Giddens)
Being Sick
Looking back I realize now that my Grandmother was very sick, I think she put on a act a lot of the time to avoid showing just how much pain she was in. I realize now that when she said to me last year that she didn’t understand why she was here, it was because she was just trying to ease me into this idea. I think she felt isolated and alone in this world, regardless that she understood how much her family cared about her, without having my Grandfather around in her mind I think she felt meaningless. I wish I could say that this unit has exposed and opened me up to the strangeness of death and that feeling sad shouldn’t be factored into the equation of moving on from this world. In many ways though it makes me even sadder how death is treated in this country. It makes you feel like a battery run robot that either will be repaired or tossed. I think right now dying seems much scarier than it will when we are older. Personally though I fear the system more than the actual act.
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