HW 29 - Reading and noting basic materials

Dying is a process; this process can include many erratic changes. When someone dies they are subject to their environment; their friends, family, physician, choices, etc... However none of this changes the fact that they are going to die. The guest speaker described the care she gave to her husband towards the end of his life at home and told us about how arduous of a task it was because of the intimacy involved. The film Sicko interviewed a mourning widow who stated the health care system that was supposed to help her husband let him die because the medicine that would have saved/ prolonged his life was "experimental". In Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie discussed "detachment", he says that “… detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience *penetrate* you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you *fully*. That’s how you are able to leave it” (104). People die differently, however the fact that they die does not change.

People in hospitals today are isolated from the outside world when they are dying or have an illness, in fact hospitals are similar to prisons in some ways, there security guards and constant surveillance of patients. This of course is all for the well being of the patients but similar to a prison nonetheless. An Article on the Analysis of the stressful effects of hospitalization and source isolation on coping and psychological constructs found that "hospitalization results in many negative feelings that have detrimental effects on psychological well being and coping. However, more significantly, infected subjects who were isolated demonstrated feelings of anxiety, and depression that were significantly higher, and feelings of self esteem and sense of control that were significantly lower." Retirement homes are an easy place for people to be isolated; in fact it is a technique that some nurses use called "Forced Isolation" (1). An article from IQnursing homes described this form of isolation as "a form of psychological nursing home abuse, which is also known as mental nursing home abuse. Isolation occurs when nursing home staff members refuse to give residents any attention or give them only the silent treatment."(1) Isolation can affect how a person feels about dying, however will not affect whether they die or not.

I have gone through my own personalProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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xperiences with illness and dying and I can say first hand that having a support system and people you care about around you is both a positive and a negative. When I had appendicitis I was in the hospital for a little more than a week, and my parents were there the entire time. There were moments in which I felt ashamed, I didn’t want my parents to see me like that and even more I didn’t want to see the expression of pity on there faces when they saw me. However there were sometimes in which I was really glad my parents were there, they got me food and water, changed the channel on the T.V. and gave me a psychological boost at some moments after the surgery. I felt that after I got out of the hospital I had somewhere to go, and that I wasn’t just a wasted space. I interviewed a family member in Egypt a few days ago for another assignment and I remember her saying that "I can't detach, to feel all these emotions to their full capacity and then die never to feel them again would kill me by itself." Which was a response to Morrie’s comment from Tuesdays with Morrie “… detachment doesn’t mean you don’t let the experience *penetrate* you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate you *fully*. That’s how you are able to leave it”. Looking back I found myself trying to distance myself from those around me because I didn’t want them to see me like that because of the reason that I could not detach myself. Detachment would have been too difficult to accomplish not because of the fact you need to allow the emotions to penetrate you fully but because you would have to let them go in the end, and that was something I don’t think I was capable of achieving.