HW 19- Family Perspectives on Illness and Dying

In my family, there is certainly a history of disease. On both my mother and father's sides of the family, everyone is highly prone to skin cancer because of how fair skinned we are and there have been numerous cases on both sides of the family. Another issue in my family has been heart disease, but the only confirmed case of that that I can think of in my family was my grandfather, who used to smoke a lot and did not eat on a particularly healthy diet. Because of these diseases, my family has had a lot of experience visiting friends and family in the hospital, which has led to me visiting the hospital quite a bit as well. The experiences that my parents have had dealing with illness and dying are the kind of things that make me afraid of growing older.

My father is the youngest of a family of six siblings; he is even nine minutes younger than his twin sister. His father died when he was only two years old and was raised by just his mom for his whole childhood. His mother (my grandmother) was in an accident not to long after I was born where she hit her head so hard that she began to internally bleed into her brain. For as long as I can remember, although she was able to think just as quickly as she had before, something happened where she could not get the words out, and the only word I ever remember her saying was "yes." She was ill for her entire life, but every time I saw my father around her he would always act and look perfectly happy, just like the rest of my family. I was young, so I unfortunately did not do as good of a job looking happy and I really just felt awkward around her... which I came to regret deeply when she finally passed away.

My mother has also had her fair share of dealing with illness and dying. Her father had two heart attacks in his lifetime, and did not survive long after the second one. However, unlike my fathers family, everyone on my mothers side lives out of range for us to visit often; in California. So my mother did not have to pretend like she was not worried. However, back when my godfather was in a car accident that nearly killed him, she immediately left to go see him. Not that this is an unreasonable norm for dealing with the ill and dying, but the response of my family to someone who is sick has been to immediately go out and visit them in the hospital, even if they are 2000 miles away like my godfather was. Another good friend of my mothers was diagnosed with ALS recently, which completely took away his ability to move and speak. I remember visiting him with my family a few times, and watching as she was as supporting and kind beside the hospital bed as I have ever seen her.

HW 18- Health & Illness & Feasting

My experience of Thanksgiving this year was similar to the way I experience it practically every year, and practically every year Thanksgiving is one of the few times of the year that completely fits in to the aspects of our countries practices that relate to physicality. I know for a fact that there are many people that just use Thanksgiving as an excuse to eat as much food as they want and that there are also many that couldn't even explain what the holiday is meant to celebrate. In my family, it feels like Thanksgiving is becoming less and less traditional and cultural and more just about the physicality of eating as much food as we want. For instance, almost every year for this holiday, my parents and I gather with the rest of my family at my aunt and uncle's house. However, this year my parents wanted to go down the block instead to a party where not even they knew many of the people that would be there. There certainly was going to be a lot of food there, however.

Another tradition that my parents and I missed out on with my family was sitting around the TV with everyone and watching football. Although it does not sound like a necessarily thankful thing to do, it has become practically a cultural ceremony in many families across the country, and I'm sure there are many that would argue that it is a good thing to do because football is a very "American" game. These two activities of eating as much food as you can and lying around and watching TV afterwards are not exactly "healthy" things to do, and further represent how the holiday of Thanksgiving is one of the few times where body-centered practices dominate over anti-body practices.

In my opinion, it is not necessarily a bad thing that there is one day every year that is almost completely devoted to body-centered practices, because all the others are practically all connected with the mind. In fact, another way that Thanksgiving reminds us of our physicality is the way many people tend to feel the next day. After such rapid consumption of food that, very often, is not necessarily healthy for you, many people will feel very tired initially after the meal. After a little while, some people will probably experience stomach pain while others might continue to experience fatigue. This idea is similar to what we talked about in class, and how only when a person is ill is when they truly start to consider their physicality. This is yet another reason that represents how Thanksgiving is becoming completely based on body-centered practices over anti-body practices, especially in families like mine.

HW 17

Fortunately, my experiences with illness and dying have not been too extensive. I have visited multiple family members and a close friend of family a few times at the hospital, but have not myself had to deal with severe illness. (even though some would say that we are dying the moment we are born, I prefer not to look at life in such a negative way) In a way, I have been taught to see illness and dying as something that is just a part of life, and every now and then I find myself thinking about it and becoming a little depressed. After all, it is a depressing thought, knowing that everyone including yourself will have to deal with illness in their lives.

I have also always had a dislike for hospitals in general, because in my life all the times that I have had to visit the hospital it has been for a bad occasion, and never for something like giving birth. This has placed an unfair bias in my mind that hospitals are miserable places, and all the hospital shows on television today as well as the people I know who have spent a long time in the hospital also do a good job of emphasizing how the patients really just want to be free. My family has been around much longer than I have, and have had a lot more time to think about these issues. They have learned to accept the fact that practically everyone will deal with illness and dying, and have had a lot more experience in the past with both of those things than I have.

To be honest, I am not really familiar with the social norms involved with illness and dying. However, I am aware that it has become very common for parents to get a lot of vaccines for their children when they are very young, and it is "normal" for many people to go to the doctors office for an annual check-up. Something I don't usually think about much is how much humans pay attention to their health compared to other animals; we brush our teeth, we constantly go to doctors and specialists, we always wash our hands... and other creatures just eat what they can to survive. It seems like humans pay so much attention to avoiding illness that we end up living unnaturally long lives.