Final Blog.......

What I will take from English 235 Literature and Medicine is that I appreciated literature more now than before. Before I have taken this course I was not very knowledgeable of Literature in Medicine. After reading the memoir novels, poems, and short stories I have gain more knowledge in understanding of Illness, disability, dying, and practice of medicine. Literature has made me realize that doctors usually think they are correct but we should get more opinions not just one. 

"The doctors called it a hidden occlusion and said it was a

 one-in-a-million circumstances. Maybe if it could have been

 detected somehow and surgery undertaken immediately, 

they could have saved him."

For example, In a Small Good Thing, has surprises me that the doctor based his diagnose on tests only and had misdiagnosed the patient. If he would of caught his mistake earlier then, the child might have lived. However, these are daily life scenarios that occur in our Hospitals. This is why future doctors should take a course in literature so they can become more compassionate toward their patients.

            In addition, when a doctor is diagnosing a patient it’s sometimes hard to understand the patient because of their medical terminology language; the patient tends to not ask questions because they feel ashamed or embarrassed. So what I will do differently in my future visits to the doctor is if I do not understand something, I will ask for the doctor to explain it to me more thoroughly. Also, I have realized doctors are cold and not compassionate toward their patients, I have observed that throughout the different stories we have read. Sometimes, it would be nice if a doctor would be more caring so the patient will feel comfortable with their doctor.

Also, I have learned that suffering and pain is different for every individual. Someone who is trying to understand the individual will never be able to relate to the pain or suffering of what the individual is going through. Even if you write or talk about the pain or suffering you are going through with full details of how you feel. The person will never be able to feel or comprehend how the individual is in pain or is suffering because only that individual who is going through is living through it and no one else.

A one significant thing that I have learned and I will always take with me is about the concept of a good death. After watching the movie Wit 

"Do what you will,

but the paper is due when it is due.
I don't know...
I feel so much..

I look back and I see these scene




What is the word?                

 s and I..."

and reading The Death of Ivan Ilych, 
"'Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,' it suddenly occurred to him. 'But how could that be, when I did everything properly?' he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible.?"

has made me realize how a person must have an illness in order to look back in their life if they have been living a good life. And it was sad that Vivian and Ivan did not live their life to the fulfillment because the only part they were successful was in their careers. However, it was too late for them to change their way of life but not to late to accept that they were not living life the correct way. So it had made me realize and question if I was living my life to the humane fulfillment and not only focusing on my career because I do not wish to live my life as Vivian or Ivan did. When I’m in my dying point, I will like to look back in my life and see what I have accomplish with my flaws but, be satisfy how my life turned out to be ,and not regret I wish I was more humane. The concept on a good death has influence me to enjoy what life has to offering you.

Finally, the course has changes my point of view on the roles of a doctor, a patient, and a care giver. Literature in medicine helps us understand the roles in medicine and how it has change over time. After, analyzing and interpreting the readings from the class, I have gain interests to continue to read similar texts, and continue to explore the different concepts in the  literature in medicine that we were not able to explore in class.  Also, this course has made me to be more humane and compassionate.  I was able to understand the meaning of illness and how can an illness take over the individual. Then through metaphors, poems, stories, and autobiography we will give you a sense of the individual pain or suffering.Thankful, how the practice of medicine is changing over the years and hopefully one day we will  have more successful treatment for the deadly illness. 

Wit: .......John Donne's Sonnet

“Death

Be not proud

Though some have called thee

mighty and dreadful

For thou art not so

For those whom thou think'st,

thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor death

Nor yet canst thou kill me

Thou art slave to Fate

Chance, kings, and desperate men

And dost with poison,

war and sickness dwell

And poppy or charms

can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke

Why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past

We wake eternally

And death shall be no more,

Comma.

Death thou shalt die"

Wit

 

“Miss Bearing, you have advanced metastatic ovarian cancer.”

“I believe I was being thoroughly diagnosed.”

“The first week of each cycle you'll be hospitalized for chemotherapy” 

The next week you may feel a little tired.”

“The next two will be fine, relatively. Eight months like that.”

“This treatment is the strongest thing we have to offer you.”

“The important thing is for you to take the full dose of chemotherapy.”

“There may be times when you wish for a lesser dose, due to the side effects.”

“But we've got to go full force.”

“I've been asked, "How are you feeling?"

“while throwing up into a plastic basin.”

“I have been asked...”

“As I was emerging from a four-hour operation...with a tube in every orifice:”

"How are you feeling today?"

"Significant contribution to knowledge."

"Eight cycles of chemotherapy."

“Give me the full dose.”

“The full dose every time.”

“The attention was flattering...”

“for the first five minutes.”

 

 

 

 

Vivian had realized what was the actually meaning of life, that to be intelligent wasn’t all. It took her cancer’s treatment for her realize that. I believe if Vivian would have survived the cancer, she would become a more humane person. She would have lived the rest of her life differently. Unlike, Lucy Grealy, she was a survivor cancer but her life had gone downhill. She became addict to drugs and she never found her true identity. Lucy’s biggest struggle was trying to figure who she was in life and Vivian’s biggest struggle was trying to seek for the attention that she didn’t gave. Lucy’s cancer damages her life because she wasn’t able to be a normal human because she was always being the hospital. Actually was never able to live a normal life since, many people would be rude to her because of the deformation of her face. Vivian’s cancer made her realize that there is more about life that just being the smartest person you can be. Unfortunately, for Vivian she wasn’t able to live life in a different perspective as she wish. However, Lucy had the opportunity to change her life, but she didn’t take advantage of it.

Autobiography of a Face Part One……….Lucy Grealy

 

“Their Approval or disapproval defined everything for me, and I believed with every cell in my body that approval wasn't written into my particular script.”

“I was responsible for my mother’s unhappy life.”

“Fascinated by how much pain I was in and by how strangely peaceful I felt.”

“She told me how brave I was and how lucky we all were that this had happened to me and not Sarah, my twin sister.”

“I loved any chances to drive through the filthy, bewildering streets of New York, see so many different types of people, marvel that so many noises could exist all at once.”

“All I had to do was perform heroically and I could personally save my entire family.”

“I’d consciously packed no stuffed animal to bring to the hospital. I was of paramount importance that I appear adult, strong, unafraid.”

“Not one person ever said the word cancer to me, at least not in a way that registered as pertaining to me.”

“Sooner or later we all have to learn the words with which to name our own private losses, but then we just stood there in a front of the nurses’ desk, speechless.”

 

Lucy family was not the type of supportive or emotional family. Lucy’s family related to David Small’s family. The both families were dysfunctional in way and demonstrated that they had to be strong and should not show any sign of crying because it was sign of weakness. Both families had issues on how they will get money to pay for their child’s treatment. Also, Lucy and David had trouble through their childhood of finding their own identity but eventually David found his pathway through life.

 

Cathedral

“I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit.”

“My idea of blindness came from the movies.”

“A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.”

“She told him everything.”

“”If you love me”, she said, you can do this for me. “If you don’t love me, okay”.

“But if you had a friend, any friend, and the friend came to visit. I’d make him feel comfortable.”

“I don’t have any blind friends.”

“I felt sorry for the blind man for a little bit.”

“I’m imagining now her last thought maybe this: that he never even knew what she looked like.”

“”We ate everything there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow.”

“The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where everything was on his plate. I watched with admiration as he used his knife and fork on the meat.”

“I’ll try some with you.”

“I rolled us two fat numbers. I lit one and passed it.”

“Hold it as long as you can.”

“In could tell he didn't know the first thing.”

“It’s fine with me. Whatever you want to watch is okay.”

“I’m always learning something. Learning never ends. It won’t hurt me to learn something tonight. I got ears.”

“But maybe you could describe one to me?”

“I wish you’d do it. I’d like that. If you want to know, I really don’t have a good idea.”

“I hope you don’t mind me asking you. Can I ask you something? Let me ask you a simple question, yes or no, I’m just curious and there’s no offense.”

“But let me ask if you are in any way religious? You don’t mind me asking?”

“Close your eyes now”

“So we kept on with t. his fingers rode my finger as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.”

“My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn't feel like I was inside anything.”

“It’s really something”

He……..By Katherine Anne Porter

“God knows what would become of us if we lived north”

“They would say: keeping them decently clean was hard. It looks like our luck won’t never let up on us”

“No, not if it comes to it that we have to live in a wagon and pick cotton around the country. Nobody ‘s going to get a chance to look down on us”

“You know yourself it’s more natural for a mother to be that way. People don’t expect so much of father, some way.”

“I wouldn't have anything happen to Him for all the world, but it just looks like I can’t keep Him out of mischief. He’s so strong and active, he’s always into everything; he was like that since he could walk.”

“I’ll remember it to my dying day. The innocent walk with God-that’s why He don’t get hurt.”

“Repeated these words, she always felt a warm pool spread in her breast, and the tears would fill her eyes”

“Don’t never let anybody hear you say such things. They’d think you favored the other children over Him.”

"He’s my child, and I’m not going to have people say anything. I get sick of people coming around saying things all the time.”

“My Lord, look at you now after all my trying!”

“Lord, don’t let anything happen to Him. Lord, you know people will say we oughtn't to have sent Him. You know they’ll say we didn't take care of him"

"We’re losing our hold”

“Why can’t we do like other people and watch for our best chances? They’ll be calling us poor white trash next.”

“Then doctor has told you and told you time and again He can’t ever get better, and you might as well stop talking.”

“Doctors don’t know everything.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t feel so bad, do you? You don’t feel so bad, do you?”

“She had loved hi, as much as she possibly could, there were Adna~ and Emly who had to be thought of too, there was nothing she could do to make up to him for his life. Oh, what a mortal pity He was ever born.”

“They came in sight of the hospital, with neighbor driving very fast, not daring to look behind him. “

Interpreter of Maladies ..........By Jhumpa Lahiri

“Mr. Kapasi pulled over to the side of the road as Mr. Das took a picture of a barefoot man, his head wrapped in a dirty turban, seated on top of a loft of grain sacks pulled by a pair of bullocks.”

“But so romantic”

“He began to check his reflection in the rear view mirror as he drove , fairly grateful that he had chosen the grey suit that morning.”

“When do you return to America”

Mr. Kapasi  fell in love with Mrs.. Das because he thought she had the same feelings. When she had said, “But so romantic” about his job because his wife thought his job was not that important. However, both couples were not that happy with each other and showed no love for each other. Mr. Kapasi felt that there would be a future with Mrs. Das. So, he extended his tour to spend more time with her. Then, Mrs. Das confessed to Mr. Kapasi that Bobby is not Raj’s son . This changed Mr. Kapasi's feeling about Mrs.. Das. He  let the paper with his address written on it fly away. I think he felt that it was better to let the paper disappear. 

Strong Horse Tea......................... Alice Walker

“Why don’t that doctor come on here?”

“I don’t believe in none of that swamp magic. All the old remedies I took when I was a child come Just Short of killing me”.

" We don't need none of your witch's remedies."

" The only thing that can save this child now is some good strong horse tea."

"The only thing. And if you wants him out of the bed you better make tracks to git some."

"Quickly she stuck her mouth there, over the crack, and ankle deep in the slippery mud of the pasture and freezing in her shabby wet coat, she ran home to give the still warm horse tea to her baby Snooks."
 

A mother would do anything to save their child’s life even if they had  to sacrifice their own life. The Snooks cannot be cured. Rannie realized that Sarah is the only person that would be able to save her baby.  Sarah sends Rannie to get the Horse tea so, she can have time to herself ,and realized that her son was going to die.

Report From The Hospital

Report From The Hospital 

 Wislawa Szymborska

“We used matches to draw lots: who would visit him.

And I lost. I got up from our table.

Visiting hours were just about to start”

When I said hello he didn’t say a word.

I tried to take his hand—he pulled it back

Like a hungry dog that won’t give up his bone.

He seemed embarrassed about dying

What do you say to someone like that?

Our eyes never met, like in a faked photograph.

He didn’t care if I stayed or left.

He didn’t ask about anyone from our table

Not you, Barry. Or you, Larry. Or you, Harry.

My head started aching. Who’s dying on whom?

I went on about modern medicine and the three violets in a jar.

I talked about the sun and faded out.

It’s a good thing they have stairs to run down.

It’s a good thing they have gates to let you out.

It’s a good thing you’re all waiting at our table.

The hospital smell makes me sick."

When I read this poem, I felt that the person had no desire to say their goodbye to their loves ones. When a person knows that they are dying, especially have no cure then, they no longer care to live. They are just waiting for death to take them away. When a patient is diagnose with a deadly illness. It scares the patient because all their future goals they wanted to accomplish might never become true. In some cases, being a hospital might worsen the patient condition rather than making better because you think about how many patients have die from the same illness. The hurtful treatment you have to go through, it just makes you weaker instead of stronger.

Short Stories

The Girl with a Pimply Face

" Doctor, you save my baby. I pay you everything,"

" The infant had a severe congenital heart defect, a roar when you listened over the heart that meant, to put it crudely, that she was no good, never would be."

" I'll help her, I said, but she's got a bad heart."

" I pay you. I pay you twenty dollar. Doctor, you fix my baby. You good doctor. You fix."


The use of Force

" I'm here to look at her throat on the chance that she might have diphtheria and possibly die of it."

" I had to have a throat culture for her own protection. But First I told the parents that it was entirely up to them."

"Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild hysterical shrieks."

" And there it was both tonsils covered with membrane."

In both stories the doctor would do whatever they can to save the patient’s life. However, the only difference between both stories is that in The Girl with a Pimply Face, a Russian family would keep asking for a doctor to come and save her baby.  The doctor would continue to come and check on the baby but, not get paid for the visits because the family did not have enough money.  Until, another doctor told him that he had delivery that baby and didn't paid him either. However, they did have money because the father gets paid by the county. So family is a bunch of liars and the mother is always drinking whisky so, she's never in a stable mind. So the doctor tells him to not continue to see they baby because they are using him.  In The use of Force, the family was not liars. They will do anything for their daughter. The doctor use his knowledge on medicine to be able to  save the child from diphtheria.  

  

A Small Good Thing

"The birthday boy stepped off the curb at an intersection and was immediately knocked down by a car. He fell on his side with his head in the gutter and his legs out in the road."

" The child was in the hospital with a mild concussion and suffering from shock. "

"Why doesn't he wake up, Howard? I don't understand, if he's all right."

" He's going to be all right. He'll wake up in a little while."

"No, I don't ant to call it a coma. He's just in a very deep sleep."

" His lips parted as his last breath was puffed through his throat and exhaled gently through the clenched teeth."

"The doctors called it a hidden occlusion and said it was a one-in-a-million circumstances. Maybe if it could have been detected somehow and surgery undertaken immediately, they could have saved him."

"Is there anything else I can do for the moment?" He asked them.

The first time I had read this story it made me cry because I remember  the time my nephew was in the hospital. It was a terrifying feeling to know that he might die because he had breathing problems. So I felt the same anxiety as Ann and Howard did. The doctor were more detailed in their explanation to my sister than the doctor in the story.   Thankful for us, my nephew did recover, and he is a healthy fourteen year old boy now. It is important how doctors communicate with their patient's love ones because they are trusting them to do everything they can to save them.

 In contrast, "People Like That..." both parents did not trust the doctors with their baby. The mother was more concerned about her son than the father. The father was worried about how they going to pay for the treatment. Also, both doctors did horrible explaining  the diagnose of the patient because one doctor use medical terms that it’s hard to understand for the patient's parents, and the other doctor use very few word .  However, doctors should not always depend on their tests or when they examine patients to determine a patient's Illness because it would always be a correct diagnose.

HER FINAL SHOW

HER FINAL SHOW

" She said it was a better way to die

Than most; she seemed relieved, almost at peace,

The stench of her infected Kaposi's 

Made bearable by the Opium applied

 So daintily behind her ears: "I know

It costs a lot, but dear, I'm nearly gone".

Her Shade of eyeshadow was emerald green;

She clutched her favorite stones. Her final show 

She'd worn them all, sixteen necklaces of pearls,

Ten strings of beads. She said they gave her hope. 

Together, heavy as a gallow's rope,

The gift of drag queens dead of AIDS. " Those girls,

They gave me so much strength." she whispered as 

I turned the morphine up. She hid her leg

Beneath smoothed sheets. I straightened her red wig 

Before pronouncing her to no applause."

The writer is watching her die peaceful in the hospital. Ifound

 

interesting that how she had on the sixteen necklaces from other

 

drag queens that had died from AIDS. The necklaces were the

 

strength that the girls had given her. Also, the writer straightened

 

her wig; the writer wanted her to die looking pretty like how she

 

wants to be remembered.  In the 10,000 AIDS Death in San

 

Francisco poem by Rafael Campo, talks about a particular patient

 

that he had saw dying. He connects to him because the man was the

 

same age as him.  Also, how he reflects by watching that man die

 

and how him being gay was not acceptable in Cuba. People you are

 

gay, lesbian, and transvestites should be able to come out and not

 

be kept in the closet because we live in a moderate world. People

 

should not be judge of their preference or giving less respect vs. an

 

average person.

 

The New York Times had published an article of the 10,000^th AIDS

 

death in San Francisco, and say “a gay Latino male in his 30s”.

 

The New York Times are saying that all the people that had died

 

from AIDS are gay and Latino. They should have given a more

 

been a respectful obituary poem, instead of just saying a drag queen

 

dies from AIDS.  Writers need to more caring toward report about a

 

death. If that person was part of your family, you would want a

 

more detailed report or obituary.

AIDS AND THE POETRY OF HEALING ......RAFAEL CAMPO

" I wrote poems secretly, hiding my notebooks in my closet. I thought about killing myself, because those poems knew that I was gay. " 

"Medicine for years said AIDS was a gay disease. Government waited several more years before a president said AIDS in public." 

" So I am grateful for the poetry that is written about AIDS, in that it has helped me so generously to locate myself in a world irrevocably altered by the presence of the virus." 


" I have lost myself the same way in the faces, the bodies, and the poems of people with AIDS. I see them teaching us, each one of us, the meaning of our own losses. Teaching us that every word is true. "

The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

 

“ With quick cosmetic reassurance, we are told

that our feelings are not important, our

appearance is all, the sun total of self.”

“Women have been programmed to view our

bodies only in terms of how they look and feel to

others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and

how we wish to use them. We are surrounded by

media images portraying women as essentially

decorative machines of consumer function,

constantly doing battle with rampant decay.” 

" Every woman there their either had a breast removed, might have to have a breast removed, or was afraid of having to have a breast removed. And every woman there could have used a reminder that having one breast did not mean her life was over, nor that she was less a woman, nor that she was condemned to the use of a placebo in order to feel good about herself and the way she looked."

 

Some women do feel insecure with their body after doing the

 

mastectomy because they feel less of women. They feel

 

pressure to wear the prosthesis or have breast construction. 

 

 For example, Angeline Jolie did the mastectomy on both of

 

her breast so, she can prevent breast cancer. I admired her

 

for that because that took a lot to make that decision.

 

However, she does not feel less feminine, she actually really

 

happy with her decision. She still feels secure about her body.

 

I believe the women that are having struggles with their

 

mastectomy they should look up to Jolie. Jolie is a successful,

 

talented, and beautiful woman with or without breast. 

“Women with breast cancer are warriors; also I have been to war, and still am. So has every woman who had had one or both breast amputated because of the cancer that is becoming the primary physical scourge of our time. “

 

This quote reminds me about Sontag though 

 

of how using illness in metaphor. Lorde describes her cancer

 

as a battle because she is still fighting it.  Sontag did not like

 

illness being compared to the war. So if Lorde and Sontag

 

would have met in person they would have disagreed with

 

each other perhaps not become friends.