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.