Growing up in a religous household definetly has a large impact on my view on illness and dying. my parents are very conventional so they do believe in going to the doctor and other allopathic medicne, however they may believe in it too much. my mom is very over protective and so everytime i get even the slightest fever or just a plain headache she wants to take me to the emergency room. she believes doctors can fix anything and that holistic medicine is not a reliable or even an intelligent way of healing people.my father is very similar he believes that holistic medicine is just anther way for people to get money out of you especially chiropractors.
My parents opinions are very common and are the dominant culture perspectives. I grew up with these ideas and so my opinions are very similar to theirs. Although i do have the same ideas as my parents and those ideas are similar to the dominant culture perspectives my own opinions are a bit more based on what the dominant culture perspective is.The reasons in which i believe allopathic medicines better than hollistic medicine is because it has been proven to be more effective in healing different sickness however it is mostly because it is the dominant culture perspective which is what i believe to be logical. my parents also raised me to think that the right answer is the one that works the best and the quickest. my idea of a happy life is one where i am happy and to achieve that ideal life getting illness and dying has to be a very small part of it and allopathic medicine help conribute to that.
My father was raised in egypt so illness and dying wasn't dicussed very much in his family. he told me that his mother also believed in fixing a problem quickly. although she would go to the doctor (allopathic) any time my father was sick she would also pray for him (hollistic) so she was a follower of intergrative medicine. although she did believe in intergrated medicine she would always do what the doctor told her. my grandmother assumed that because the doctor is the doctor his opinions/ reccomendations were always the right ones. This influenced my dad to think this way which then influenced me to think this way until up to 7 or so years ago. when i was 8 my doctor told me that this constant pain in my stomach was simply a stomach flu nothing to be conerned with, however it turned out to be appendisits a illness that may have killed me. the doctors diagnosis was wrong. now im not saying to never believe your doctor but to always take what they and other people say with a grain of salt. Question what you are being told and find an alternative view point because that alternative view point may just be the right one.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting
In islam it is customary to say a prayer before you eat, "bismillah al-rahman al-rahim". this prayer signifies allowing g-d or allah into your life making the devil or any bad thing go away. This feasting was a paticurlarly plain one because none of my family (other than immediate family) was able to attend. my aunt was sick and so she could not come down from and my cousins had there own party which we went to. Although we did eat at my cousins house for the "official" feast we came back home for a smaller family based feast. i felt that the religous aspect of this thanksgiving falls under the anti-body practice because it does not phsyically affect our body in any way.
The food was very pleasureable and did dominate the entire weekend. it was all focused on how the food was going to be prepared, what are we preparing, who are we preparing it for, what type of food we are preparing, and when we were going to prepare it. my mother was personally freaking out because of the amount of cooking we had to do and the fact that my dad attempted to make lasagna (which was a complete disaster). however the physical aspect of the break was very tense. When i attended the party at my cousins house you could clearly tell everything was very uncomfortable even though everyone was having a good time. my uncle and aunt were overly concerned with what every one was doing and all the guests were concerned with if they were doing anything wrong, which in all honesty was kind of funny.
Although the party was fun it was really kind of empty, not in the sense that no one was there (alot of people were the there), it was more in the sense that no family was there. the party was full of people i dont really know that well and some i did not know at all. my grandma is in egypt and is way to old to travel and my grandpa passed away so he definetly did not come. But this was all fine i have never had much of a relationship with either of them so its not like i was missing anything. You would think that my parents would be sad but there is not thanksgiving in egypt so its not something that they could say they remember doing with there parents.
The nutrition of the food was very important to me. I have been trying to stay a vegeterian ever since the food unit but it has been kind of difficult this break. I let my self take a little vacation from it so i could enjoy the turkey, but the other foods were important as well. i had my mom make salad and veggies along with grape leaves (my favorite food). Although this was a holiday based on eating like crazy there was no need for us to eat unhealthy food. i felt like the phsycality of the whole thing was very excting although we were a little sad and maybe a little uncomfortable the point was to be happy and i think that ended up happening.
The food was very pleasureable and did dominate the entire weekend. it was all focused on how the food was going to be prepared, what are we preparing, who are we preparing it for, what type of food we are preparing, and when we were going to prepare it. my mother was personally freaking out because of the amount of cooking we had to do and the fact that my dad attempted to make lasagna (which was a complete disaster). however the physical aspect of the break was very tense. When i attended the party at my cousins house you could clearly tell everything was very uncomfortable even though everyone was having a good time. my uncle and aunt were overly concerned with what every one was doing and all the guests were concerned with if they were doing anything wrong, which in all honesty was kind of funny.
Although the party was fun it was really kind of empty, not in the sense that no one was there (alot of people were the there), it was more in the sense that no family was there. the party was full of people i dont really know that well and some i did not know at all. my grandma is in egypt and is way to old to travel and my grandpa passed away so he definetly did not come. But this was all fine i have never had much of a relationship with either of them so its not like i was missing anything. You would think that my parents would be sad but there is not thanksgiving in egypt so its not something that they could say they remember doing with there parents.
The nutrition of the food was very important to me. I have been trying to stay a vegeterian ever since the food unit but it has been kind of difficult this break. I let my self take a little vacation from it so i could enjoy the turkey, but the other foods were important as well. i had my mom make salad and veggies along with grape leaves (my favorite food). Although this was a holiday based on eating like crazy there was no need for us to eat unhealthy food. i felt like the phsycality of the whole thing was very excting although we were a little sad and maybe a little uncomfortable the point was to be happy and i think that ended up happening.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit
Illness and and dying is a very important subject in my life. When i was 9 i had appendicitis (a life threatening situation) and was in the hospital for a few days before and after the surgery, so my relationship with these two topics is very personal. Growing up in an very religous household i have been taught to see illness and dying as a natural part of life, something that cannot be stopped and is all up to g-d, however that is not the feeling i had when suffering from appendicitis, that thought and type of thinking almost upset me. Why can't i be in charge of what is happening to me and my body and why is up to someone else when i die (Vague Cliche). the reason i think i felt this way was because i felt like i had no control over the one thing i thought i had control over which is myself.
Social norms around illness and dying are usually the same as i said above. i feel like people consider it sacred (and maybe it is to some of us) however nobody ever thinks of it as a just something that happens like coughing or sneezing (even though it is somewhat just as common). I believe our culture may put too much emphasis on the topic and that this takes away from how really normal it actually is (even thought normal is weird).my families approach is very similar to that of the social norm. My mother is very religous and so she tends to believe that death is a terrible thing, and that anyone who dies is special, when in actuality it is something that happens to all of us and is probably happening right now but we dont think twice about the man who just died in china or the women who died in argentina. We consider it sacred only when it relates to us which is really kind of selfish.
A very unusual perspective is actually something my friend told me who was diagnosed with diabetes about 6 years ago and it is that when you become ill, it is not a negative but a positive. It allows you to become better and stronger. You learn to live with something that impairs you in someway and survive to show people that your better than that illness, that the human body and mind was designed to be better than the flu or the cold or diabetes. no although i dont paticularly believe this i think this idea is very optimistic and gives me hope. I like the idea that humans are engineered to be better than everything else even though its not really true.
Social norms around illness and dying are usually the same as i said above. i feel like people consider it sacred (and maybe it is to some of us) however nobody ever thinks of it as a just something that happens like coughing or sneezing (even though it is somewhat just as common). I believe our culture may put too much emphasis on the topic and that this takes away from how really normal it actually is (even thought normal is weird).my families approach is very similar to that of the social norm. My mother is very religous and so she tends to believe that death is a terrible thing, and that anyone who dies is special, when in actuality it is something that happens to all of us and is probably happening right now but we dont think twice about the man who just died in china or the women who died in argentina. We consider it sacred only when it relates to us which is really kind of selfish.
A very unusual perspective is actually something my friend told me who was diagnosed with diabetes about 6 years ago and it is that when you become ill, it is not a negative but a positive. It allows you to become better and stronger. You learn to live with something that impairs you in someway and survive to show people that your better than that illness, that the human body and mind was designed to be better than the flu or the cold or diabetes. no although i dont paticularly believe this i think this idea is very optimistic and gives me hope. I like the idea that humans are engineered to be better than everything else even though its not really true.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)