HW 22 - Illness & Dying Book Part 1

Tracy Kidder. Mountains Beyond Mountains. United States: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2009.

Precis: Paul Farmer is a kind man who is an expert of sorts when it comes to healing the sick.  He broke out of Americas health care system by moving to Haiti and at a hospital that he runs off of donations. He lives there eight months of the year, healing the citizens of one of the worlds poorest nations. I had the pleasure of following him around and witnessing him do what he does best, which is to revive the people who were once withering away due to their sickness.  He grows very close to his patients and even  considers him family. A lot of his patients believe in using Voodoo healing methods, which is very popular and important in Haitian society, but they still embrace Farmer's medicines.

Quotes:
"My local hospital in Massachusetts was treating about 175,00 patients a year and had an annual operating budget of a$60 million. In 1999 Zanmi Lasante had treated roughly the same number of people, at the medical complex and out in the communities, and spent about $1.5 million, half of that in the form of donated drugs." (p.22).
"Sorcery is, at bottom, the Hatians' way of explaining suffering, but the allegations themselves can cause suffering."


My thoughts:


I thought the quote about the Hatians'  way of dealing with suffering through sorcery was very interesting because it can be easily connected to how we handle death in our society. We tend to avoid such topics because they are negative but we do this because when we over think illness, dying and suffering, we suffer mentally ourselves. This proves that suffering from thinking about suffering is a universal action. It also proves how we bring suffering upon ourselves