HW 18 - Health & Illness & Feasting

This break offered me a very clear perspective of the ideas discussed in class. My family and family friends all gathered at my grandmothers house to celebrate the holiday. My grandmother worked really hard preparing the Thanksgiving meal and all she asked of us in return was to dress up nicely. One of my grandmothers friends had a history of eating for comfort and pleasure. This habit made her so overweight that she had to get a surgery to shrink her stomach. As a result of this surgery, she has to eat very small meals frequently, so at the dinner table she took a lot of eating breaks.

After the Thanksgiving feast, everyone seemed to have the same stuffed feeling. We were all very tired and continued to sit at the dinner table for another hour or so. Afterword, our family split up the girls from the boys and the boys went to watch sports while the girls went to watch movies. The rest of my break was very similar to this, I stared at screens all day, ate, and made close to no physical movement. I was in a very anti-body mindset because I felt like there was nothing better to do.

I was not around when this happened, but apparently my little brother got very sick after our Thanksgiving meal. He threw up four times. I found out about this from eavesdropping on my parents conversation about what may have caused my brothers sickness. My mom concluded that it must be the ham because it was the one thing my grandmother did not cook. It is very easy to connect sickness to food but it is not always the leading cause. I felt that if one out of nine people got sick then it might not be the hams doing.

HW 17 - First Thoughts on the Illness & Dying Unit

I have very little personal experience with illness and dying because my family and I have always been healthy. I've only been to the hospital once apart from when I was born, and that was because I had a minor ear infection. No one I've been really close to has died, which makes me feel lucky but I know that when this occurs it will only hurt me more because I'd be closer to them. I have friends who have had their close relatives die and it seemed to have really upset them and although I had empathy, I couldn't imagine what was going through their heads and how they were able to handle it.

Illness and Dying on a personal level is a topic that is avoided because no one want to think about themselves or their loved ones being sick or dead. On the other hand, causes of illness and death are popular topics because everyone wants to avoid them to live longer. I believe our society views illness and death a negative topic when they are actually pretty inevitable. The norm is to send someone to the hospital when they are sick or dying because there are trained professionals waiting to help them.

This topic raises a lot of questions for me and makes me wonder why everyone doesn't have the basic knowledge of taking care of an ill person because it seems to be a crucial skill. Also, if everyone different, how effective is it to have general idea of how to heal them. How often does a doctors treatment actually do the patient more harm?