Diving Bell and the Butterfly
1. How do stroke survivors or anyone with chronic illness, and health providers remain hopeful and “realistic”? What values are involved in their hope?
Stroke survivors or anyone with chronic illness and health providers remain hopeful and “realistic” by counting on each other. The patients while being realistic about the outcome of their disease, stay hopeful that each of their health care providers will give them the appropriate care and will make sure that they can live with their disease in the best way possible.
Health care providers remain hopeful when their patient do not give up and are following their recommendations. They remain realistic by trying to not get attached to their patients, otherwise they will lose their objectivity.
The values involved in their hope are: trust, respect, patience, comprehension, and humility.
It is the responsibility of whoever was hopeful first and spread that hope to the less hopeful. When the expectations of the hopeful individual are not reached, it is his responsibility to make the others accept the unwanted outcome.
3. How we label a health condition is important for how those who have the condition understand themselves. Labels can empower and confine. Is “locked-in syndrome” a good descriptor of the experience of the author?
No, the label “locked-in syndrome” is not a good descriptor of the author experience. The term “locked-in syndrome” when explained literally means that the patient is locked in his body and /or his head, but our author was able to touch the world and leave his imprints by getting his ideas and a story out of his head. With the help of his health care providers, he was able to find a way to let his readers enter his head.
4. Changes after a devastating illness can alter one’s identity. How does the author see himself after the stroke? How do others see
These two essays are about two dissimilar disabilities. Nancy Mairs and David Sedaris act as examples of how an author’s writing can change the tone and meaning of a narrative. Mairs message was educational and encouraging as she explained her life with MS and how society sees her. Sedaris use of experience and memories portrays his life with obsessive-compulsive disorder; what he calls “tics”. These two writers take similar topics and pitch them in ways so the reader can see the illustration behind them.
The essays, “On Being a Cripple”, by Nancy Mairs, and “Living Under Circe’s Spell”, by Matthew Soyster are both about how each author deals with multiple sclerosis in their life and their opinions on it. Mairs’ piece is a careful examination of her experience with MS and her perspective towards her future. In contrast, Soyster writes humorously of a particular incident he had with MS and artfully weaves his ideas about the disease in with his story. In both instances, the authors share the purpose of narrating their encounter with MS to the world to raise awareness. Both employ the rhetorical strategies of appeals to pathos and varying sentence structures to achieve this goal, some more effectively than others.
Dealing with mental illness is hard, but even harder when you are the one caring for a loved one with a mental illness, making you feel as though you have been condemned to a lifetime of servitude. Bebe Moore Campbell usage of slavery allusions throughout the novel 72 Hour Hold explains just how taking care of a family member with a mental illness can feel like being enslaved to their illness. Slavery allusions are used throughout the novel to describe a mother’s, Keri, struggle of taking care of her bipolar daughter, Trina, while also insinuating that she feels as if her daughter’s illness enslaved her to her own daughter. With the usage of slavery allusions author Bebe Moore Campbell creates a new reality, one in which mental illness does
What is the director ultimately saying about the ways in which hope affects the individual?
“I am a Cripple,” when people typically hear these words they tend to feel bad for that person, but that is exactly what Mair does not want. She prefers that people treat her the same as they would if she did not have the disease. Throughout the essay, Mair discuses her disease openly. She uses an optimistic tone, so that the reader will not recoil with sadness when they hear her discuss the disease and how it affects her life. In Nancy Mair’s essay “On Being A Cripple,” Mair uses her personal stories, diction, and syntactical structures to create an optimistic tone throughout the essay, so that the audience can better connect story.
Stockholm syndrome is a phenomenon in which hostages begin to empathize and sympathize with their captor. They begin to have positive feelings for their captor and even sometimes to the point that that the victim will refuse to even testify against their captor. This has also been called Capture bonding. The phenomenon got its name after a 1972 bank robbery, where employees had been held hostage for 6 days. The hostages ultimately ended up bonding with the bank robbers, and resisted recue. They also refused to testify, and raised money for their captor’s defense.
Arguably, it is due his lack of identity that suffers from insomnia. His insomnia intensifies his identity crisis, as he is unable to differentiate between dreams and reality. Ironically, the cure that the narrator finds merely proliferates his lack of identity. He attends support groups for the terminally ill under different aliases. Whereas his IKEA fetish was caused by a “consumer’s ability to choose from a vast range of identities through products and labels” (Davis, 2002), the support groups are an attempt at belonging somewhere. “His portrayal as an exhausted and numb narcoleptic insomniac is a vivid depiction of a man suffering from the failed promise of self-fulfillment in a brand name, corporate-driven consumer society” (Davis, 2002).
Her essay is arranged in such a way that her audience can understand her life - the positives and the negatives. She allows her audience to see both sides of her life, both the harsh realities that she must suffer as well as her average day-to-day life. According to Nancy, multiple sclerosis “...has opened and enriched my life enormously. This sense that my fragility and need must be mirrored in others, that in search for and shaping a stable core in a life wrenched by change and loss, change and loss, I must recognize the same process, under individual conditions, in the lives around me. I do not deprecate such knowledge” (Mairs, 37). Mairs big claim is that she has accepted herself and her condition for what is it, yet she refuses to allow her condition to define her. Through her particular diction, tone, satire, and rhetorical elements, Mairs paints a picture of her life and shows how being a cripple has not prevent her from living her life. She is not embarrassed nor ashamed of what she is, and accepts her condition by making the most of it and wearing the title with
Disability is a ‘complex issue’ (Alperstein, M., Atkins, S., Bately, K., Coetzee, D., Duncan, M., Ferguson, G., Geiger, M. Hewett, G., et al.., 2009: 239) which affects a large percentage of the world’s population. Due to it being complex, one can say that disability depends on one’s perspective (Alperstein et al., 2009: 239). In this essay, I will draw on Dylan Alcott’s disability and use his story to further explain the four models of disability being The Traditional Model, The Medical Model, The Social Model and The Integrated Model of Disability. Through this, I will reflect on my thoughts and feelings in response to Dylan’s story as well as to draw on this task and my new found knowledge of disability in aiding me to become
The theme of isolation is utilized in writing to shape the principal characters and provide a particular vision on some crucial aspects of their identities. Authors such as Nancy Mairs in, “On Being a Cripple” Zora Neale Hurston in, “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” and Sherman Alexie in, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me”, offer us characterization to set the theme of isolation in their writing. In “On Being a Cripple” Mairs examines the public’s view of the disabled, as well as the views they have of themselves, and compare them to her own. In “How it Feels to Be Colored Me” Hurston discusses how she embraces being a girl of color in a world where people can be very discriminating. In “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me” Sherman talks about how reading and writing helped shape his life in a positive way. Every author has their own unique way to express isolation in their writing such as personal experience which provides creditability to the writing and further engages the reader.
Favali, Vanessa, and Martin Milton. "Disabled Horse-Rider's Experience Of Horse-Riding." Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis 21.2 (2010): 251-262. 7 Mar. 2011.
Hope has a profound meaning in my life. To possess hope, one must remain hopeful no matter what adversity faced or no matter how hard times may get. Hope is a belief that through any circumstance everything will get better or come out on the good side. Hope is powerful, and in times of uncertainty and hesitation, it is usually the last thing relied on for encouragement; nonetheless, hope can be beneficial with inspiring the soul when odds are against probability. I have seen hope first hand from the people who mean the most to me. From experience, hope gives one the positivity to make it through hard times. Although bumps in the road are inevitable, having hope will keep you from straying from that path.
With locked-in syndrome, Jean is paralyzed from head to toe with the ability to swivel his head and blink just his left eye. He has lost a sense of independence. He is hooked up to various machines through tubes that help him breathe and eat. Staff must bathe him, and reposition him. His only escape is his mind where he has all the time in the world to “churn over every sentence ten times, delete a word, add an adjective, and learn [his] text by heart, paragraph by paragraph” (Bauby, p. 5-6) to prepare for his publisher to dictate his book one letter at a time with each blink
Studies indicate patients who challenge their chronic illness and vigorously manage their treatment have enhanced their attitude and life enjoyment. Above all, the patient must be sanctioned to manage care and treatment (Cristcot Inc., 2014; Lamas, 2014).
Restraints are defined as, “a measure or condition that keeps someone or something under control or within limits” (Google 1). How would someone feel if he or she were restrained from natural movement or thinking? In the medical field, restraints are meant to be used to prevent harm of the patient and others with a doctor's order, yet this is not always the case. Restraints in today's time hold a negative connotation although are necessary for patient safety.