One aspect of life that most individuals take for granted is physical health. Most people assume that an individual cannot lose physical health or if somebody becomes sick the health care system will be able to recover one’s health with the new medical advances that are always happening around the world. However, this is not always the case some individuals have to face a chronic loss of health and deal with the implications of this on their life. The loss of health I will be talking about today is not a direct loss of personal health, but a loss of health that my father experiences and how different components of this loss affected my family and I’s life. Reflecting back on my childhood memories I cannot recall a moment when my father was …show more content…
For some reason, out of all my siblings I felt responsible for taking care of my dad. I constantly felt pressure to try and stop the fighting between my father and other family member as much as I could. To do this I would always hover around my father trying to make sure he was not experiencing difficulty executing a task. If I saw any sign of him struggling I would get involved, pretending as if I want to help with the chore but in reality, I merely did not want him to get mad. A prime example of this is whenever he cooked dinner, he would always struggle to bend over to reach the pots or pans, I would always be in the next room half-heartedly working on homework while the other part of me was panicking. I remember my heart would always start to race and I would not be able to focus anymore on my homework because of the fear of him becoming aggravated. At the first sign of trouble I would hop up from my living room seat, hoping I could stop him from fighting with anyone in my family. I would run into the kitchen pretending to be an overly excited child asking if he wanted help cooking, know the assistance was not a want but a need. My dad always accepted and I quickly took over the responsibility of cooking even though I hated it. He would always try to praise me after saying what a good, helpful daughter I was. Instead of the excitement that most children expressed after receiving praise I would get angry thinking I should not have to help him with these simple
The PBS Frontline documentary Being Mortal focuses on doctors and their patients who are dealing with chronic illness and nearing the end of their life. It investigates how some doctors are ill-equipped to talk about chronic illness and death with their patients and how this can lead to a lesser quality of life at the end of life stage for patients. In this documentary, we followed Dr. Atul Gawade on his journey to educate himself and others about the difficult emotional aspects of dying. The director, Thomas Jennings, along with Dr. Gawade, created a fantastic documentary about how it is important for doctors to talk to dying patients about their mortality. This was effectively done by offering experiences and interviews from doctors and their patients, by following the declining path of the patient, and by showing the real life emotion of the patients, families and doctors working through to the end.
Being in hospice care is a better alternative than being stuck in the hospital to try to avoid the unavoidable. Common misconceptions about Hospice could include that hospice makes life more miserable; however, a physician expressed his findings in Hospice,“You can only fail a patient if you fail to understand and respond to their needs. We may not be able to cure all of our patients, but if we can make them comfortable in the last moments of their lives, we will not have failed them”..Hospice care gradually emerged in the 1970s, when groups like the National Hospice Organization were formed “in response to the unmet needs of dying patients and their families for whom traditional medical care was no longer effective.”Herbert Hendin, an executive director of the American Suicide Foundations illustrates a story of a young man diagnosed with acute myelocytic leukemia and was expected to have only a few months before he died. He persistently asked the doctor to assist him, but he eventually accepted the medical treatment. His doctor told him he can use his time wisely to become close to his family. Two days before he died, Tim talked about what he would have missed without the opportunity for a
I do not have any memories of my own father as a child. I met him when I was about fourteen years old. My mother and grandmother, with the help of my uncles and aunt, raised me. Although I had strong positive male role models in my life, there was always the void of my father that I dealt with on a daily basis. I can remember at a young age, before blowing out the candles on my birthday cake, I would wish that my father would show up to my party. I had elaborate daydreams of him coming back into my life and doing things with me like I saw on television. It never happened. While walking to the train station one evening my uncle casually said to me “there’s your father” as if I saw him on an everyday basis. I didn’t...
I can remember going to school and him being very judgmental towards others and telling us “to watch who our friends where” which was his way of saying make sure you are only friends with your own culture. I can remember wanting to be friends with those who were different from me in grade school however because of my father I felt that I couldn’t because I was disobeying him. One event in particular was in the third grade when a African American student moved into town and the home room teacher paired us together to be study partners all year. It was something I hated for the longest time most of the time I spent putting him down or not helping he at all and only worrying about myself because being as senseless as I was then in my own messed up reality I thought I was acting how I should. Finally one day came when I set back and thought why do I not like this kid he’s done nothing to me yet I have treated him horribly since day one. I remember coming to the realization that this kid is not bad he’s not out to get me and just because he’s different doesn’t mean he just be looked at or treated any differently then how I am or how I treat any of my other
Fares is not physically well. She has a type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. She clarified how these two diseases generally run in our family. Mrs. Fares grandparents, mother, siblings, husband, and even some of her children have these diseases. Some family members tried to eliminate the chance or prevent themselves from developing these illnesses, but had no hope. Mrs. fares considered herself lucky because she was diagnosed at a much older age, while some other family members were as young as 35-year-old when they were diagnosed. Mrs. Fares believes shifting to a healthier diet, and eliminating sadness and stress helped to live longest without the diseases. However, the slight changes did not prevent her from being free from illness. It just runs in our
My father was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago which created complications in my family. As his health declined, I watched him struggle to pretend that he was fine. Witnessing the disease slowly controlling his body affected me on an emotional level which began to alter my mental and physical health. Due to the overbearing stress of his cancer getting worse, I began to experience poor health from sore throats to colds. Additionally, I began to also feel more anxious than usual. The declining of my father’s health caused me to experience a sense of secondhand stress as I saw him struggle daily.
Man is deemed to be both a biological and a social being; and as such, man’s health is depicted scientifically and sociologically (Williams & Bendelow, 1998). This recognition of man’s health as more than a biological phenomenon has highlighted the significance of the ontological and emotional component of health and illness (Williams & Bendelow, 1998, pp. 21-22). Illness, described as the “social meaning of the biological condition [disease]” (Eisenberg, 1977 cited in Conrad & Barker, 2010), is experienced as influenced by culture and social systems (Conrad & Barker, 2010). The process whereby an individual experience an illness has, subsequently, appealed and interest many scholars and researchers alike as noticeably indicated by the diverse literature currently available.
showed itself at moments, and I always was deeply upset knowing, his father could never do
Hayden & van der Riet indicate narratives provide context that can offer a profound and comprehensive examination of a person’s experience. Living with a chronic illness or enduring an acute illness can be a life-changing experience and these accounts of illness are interpretations of an individual’s understanding of their situation, reflected by environments, such as hospitals, preceding illness and life experience. Henceforth a person’s narratives provide a deep thorough view of their illness experience and inform how we can best deliver future
Strength, independence, and perseverance are some of the positive traits my father taught me along with several negative traits such as anger, distrust for others, and hatred toward men. My mom was a single mother from the start. As she delivered me, he sat inside of a jail cell. When he was out of the penitentiary, he would run away from his family to do drugs and meet women. He would often walk out on us without any warning and return at any time. I did not understand, especially as a child, how significant of an impact his vanishing act would bestow upon me. I grew to be distrusting of others, because if my dad would let me down, then so would everyone else. I became bitter at the world and everyone it encompassed. I blamed my father’s mistakes on the world and believed that the world’s influence made my father do drugs, prefer all of the other women to my mom, and spend more time in jail than he did in his own home. Being neglected by my father, seeing how his bad decisions not only hurt him but also his loved ones around him, and witnessing my mother struggle to raise my brother and me caused me to mature at an early age, and shaped my belief that I could not depend on anyone but myself in order to live a happy life.
My passion for health and wellness sparked when I was separated from my parents at the age of 11. My father was diagnosed with tuberculosis that later turned out to be Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. This forced my parents to relocate to less polluted areas while my brother and I stayed in the city to attend the school for the gifted. Education was scarce and even harder to enroll in an institution that will open the doors for higher education. My brother and I lived in Ho Chi Minh City with a nanny and only saw my mother twice a week. My mother left me these words shortly after the move, “If there is anything that you can’t do, imagine that you do not have parents and no one will help you, except yourself. Be strong”. With these words embedded in my heart, I spent the rest of my school years perusing healthcare and wellness in order to impact the health of society as a whole and to prevent any child from experiencing what I have. I am confident that my passion will have an effect on
Growing up we always have someone in our life who looks after us until we reach an age when we need less supervision. This person is also someone who we often enough look to in stressful times. For me this person is my dad. My dad and I do not always see eye to eye but we have a strong relationship that we can fall back on. The relationship has been tested at times. Things that are tested in it are disagreements, changes in view, or when I do something he thinks isn’t right. One time my dad and I took a fishing trip to Baucus Minnesota. Over this trip we had many fun times. One day we were on the boat and it was midafternoon the fish weren’t biting like they were earlier that morning. My dad wanted to leave. But I wanted to stay and fish a little while longer. He said “what’s the point of fishing if the fish aren’t biting” I responded with “what would we be doing if we were not fishing right now. I finally gave in and we got off the lake and then went to a nice restaurant and at the end of it my dad was right and we had a good day.
Health is not a permanent state; I believe that everyone experiences times in their life when they are not healthy. At these times of an unwell state the individual may require support. Additionally, I believe that health is a state of mind; if one believes they are healthy in a positive way, then they can be considered healthy. By being aware that any individual’s health status can change I can being sensitive towards understanding vulnerability in clients and provide them with
My parents always emphasized the importance of family and the untimely deaths of my grandparents certainly added to their vigilance. Before I was born, my mother’s father died of heart failure before age sixty. By adolescence, my remaining grandparents passed away within a four-year span as a result of smoking-related lung disease, unsuccessful triple bypass surgery and a brain hemorrhage. The celerity of their deaths and the possibility of preventing these events with lifestyle changes has forever branded me with the importance of preventive care.
The more I grew up, the more distant I became from my father. When my father was mad at any one of us, it seemed like the end of the world. Nothing was worse than my father completely ignoring me. When I was little, I went with my father and brother to the toy store. My dad bought my brother a toy, and for the first time ever, I got mad and jealous at him. My dad saw how I reacted towards my brother and when we all got to the car, he told me not to get inside. This happened more than ten years ago, and I still can feel that tightening feeling in my stomach. I still feel the tears that came down as I watched my dad cold-heartedly drive off and leave me in the parking lot. My father had no remorse when he saw me crying. It seemed to me that he was more satisfied with himself when he saw anyone of us crying.