So unfortunately I only could interview two people in my family about their pregnancy and birth experiences but I feel during my interviews I was given a perfect documentation of what it's like going through pregnancy and experience giving birth.
I started off both of y interviews asking: "Please give me some insights and description on your own experience of being pregnant and your own birth process?"
Interview 1: My Mother.
"Child birth is an amazing experience. Actually it's a bit indescribable but not delicious! I experienced three different pregnancies and deliveries. The 1st was by far the toughest as they often are. Due to the fact that I changed doctors in my 8th month because I disagreed with many of her practices. I can only attribute my totally natural childbirth experience to my new doctor's patience and cooperation and his agreement to adhere to my wishes as best he could. Since my daughters presentation or position in my uterus was not head down that could have created a problem for a vaginal delivery and would have warranted a c section. It took many more hours of labor for the traumatic position to change.My labor progressed but it was difficult for my cervix to reach ten centimeters which is required to begin pushing. Imagine doing sit ups for four hours while experiencing horrendous uterine contractions!? Luckily my baby turned head down and was in fact delivered at 8:45PM. 10 hours after my water broke. She was 7lbs & 9oz happy and healthy and I was very sore and tired. My second baby the contractions were not as bad, I was six and a half centimeters already when we got to the hospital. They broke my water and I progressed very quickly to nine centimeters and pushed him out at ten centimeters with a small episiotomy. He was 8lbs & 1oz. My third baby was a breeze. I was watching TV from 1-2 PM and in the hospital at 3PM . The labor was wild, crazy fast and hard. My mail doctor couldn't believe how fast my labor was. Although he wasn't even in the room at the time, I had the best female nurses and doctors by my side that day. He was born at 4:30PM 8lbs & 4oz. And no episiotomy this time , I love those females.
Interview 2: My Eldest Sister.
"There is no book you can read, advice you can hear or class you can take to prepare you for the experiences you face throughout pregnancy and childbirth. Your body goes through a whirlwind of change and you endure greater pain than you have known before. However, it is truly a remarkable and extraordinary experience. The day I gave birth to my son was the best day of my life to date and gave me the most precious and rewarding gift a person can receive.You experience many contractions leading up to the day you actually go into labor; the first "labor" contraction although not that intense has a different feeling however. It was the beginning of an upward crescendo that would climb to the point of unbearable pain. I dealt with 7 hours of this discomfort (that is an understatement!) before heading to the hospital. Although, I had every intention of having a natural, drug-free birth, that idea quickly changed once my labor was in full swing. Although I made it through 13 hours of labor, excruciating pain every 5 minutes, I gave into an epidural for the final 6 hours. Making this decision allowed for a much more pleasant time from then on.Although my pregnancy thus far had been without any complications, the doctors began to notice that every time I had a contraction my baby's heartrate would drop. This meant he was not breathing between each contraction. This was a very scary thought and meant that as the contractions became closer together, he would have less and less time to breathe. My husband and I were starting to become nervous, especially when my doctor told me they were going to prepare the operating room in the case I might need to have an emergency ceasarean section. He was worried that the umbilical cord might be wrapped around my precious baby's neck. Well the time came for me to start pushing and my doctor assisted the delivery with forceps to pull the baby out in case he did have the cord around his neck. I am extremely happy to report however, it was wrapped around his leg twice and not his neck, thank goodness! Also, a c-section was gladly avoided. My son was immediately placed on my stomach and the feeling of elation my husband and I felt the first moment we saw our son was indescribable. It was a moment we prepared a long time for after making the decision we were ready to have a baby after almost 10 years together. The entire experience was life-changing and miraculous. Pregnancy, childbirth and now child-rearing have been the hardest but most rewarding time in my life. I have never been happier than I am with my precious Leo."
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Friday, January 21, 2011
HW 32-Thoughts following Illness & Dying unit
What I believe are some of the most nightmarish practices in our culture that deal with the topic of Illness & Dying are for instance the hospital situations a large amount of Americans get themselves with. For example, open heart surgery is a plain out nightmare. I mean the surgeons open your chest up for christ sake and operate on the organ that is most vital to your life. Another instance in the hospital atmosphere could just be being hooked up to a breathing machine because you can't breath by your self. Think about how horrible that is..., you can't even expand and retract your own lungs, how must that feel, how powerless would you feel in that position? Even the topic of Suicide which I discussed in my project in my last post, I feel can be classified as nightmarish. Although I say that it can be nightmarish to some people I feel that it just as well can be classified as an alternative practice in our culture around Illness & Dying. I say this because someone could see the act of committing suicide a sickness and a nightmare in one instance but the person actually committing suicide could just as well in the other had see the act as a form of salvation from their personal suffering. As well another alternative could be hooking up a morphine machine to yourself in your last days of your life. But to bring this post to an end overall what I've learned in this unit now at its end will most defiantly change the way I percieve Illness & Dying and the way I will handle in from now on. I feel that I will lead my life a lot better now knowing what I have learned in this unit.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
HW 31 - Comment 3
Comments to peers:
Matt,
After reading your post I can relate to your experiences because I too have lost a Grandmother. What I personally liked about your post was that it's not just some study or some little research it's real. You discuss your feelings and your thoughts about the end of your Grandmothers life and how it effected you and others and to me that takes a lot of will power and personal strength to share such deep parts about yourself. I love your insight that a person dying doesn't just effect the person it effects everyone around them, it's a very thoughtful realization that a lot of people for the most part I've noticed don't come to terms with. Overall great project, but as well check your spelling and punctuation before posting.
-Brendan.
Sam,
After reading your project I loved your set up of how after you visited the Hallmark that you connected it to various authors to back up your point and that is a great technique. But what really caught my eye in your post was your thoughts on the people inside of the Hallmark. The entire first paragraph which is what I'm referring where you describe the place as ornate and the people as not engaged as a happy person should be. I loved the way you made this observation so clearly. All of the people I know in my family see old folk's homes in such a different way but you describe it in the way it is suppose to be described and I have the same view's on them as you.
-Brendan
Matt,
After reading your post I can relate to your experiences because I too have lost a Grandmother. What I personally liked about your post was that it's not just some study or some little research it's real. You discuss your feelings and your thoughts about the end of your Grandmothers life and how it effected you and others and to me that takes a lot of will power and personal strength to share such deep parts about yourself. I love your insight that a person dying doesn't just effect the person it effects everyone around them, it's a very thoughtful realization that a lot of people for the most part I've noticed don't come to terms with. Overall great project, but as well check your spelling and punctuation before posting.
-Brendan.
Sam,
After reading your project I loved your set up of how after you visited the Hallmark that you connected it to various authors to back up your point and that is a great technique. But what really caught my eye in your post was your thoughts on the people inside of the Hallmark. The entire first paragraph which is what I'm referring where you describe the place as ornate and the people as not engaged as a happy person should be. I loved the way you made this observation so clearly. All of the people I know in my family see old folk's homes in such a different way but you describe it in the way it is suppose to be described and I have the same view's on them as you.
-Brendan
Sunday, January 16, 2011
HW 30-Illness & Dying-Culminating Experimental Project
One dominant social practice that engulfs our people of this world is suicide. Every forty seconds on this earth someone commits suicide. In American every 18 minutes someone commits suicide. This act is an illness and can most certainly be categorized as an topic dominant social practice's of illness & dying. What I chose to explore was my own families experiences with the topic of Illness & Dying. First I interviewed my father about his experiences with death and I specifically asked him about his own experiences in Vietnam. He told me many stories about marines contracting rare strain's of syphilis and dying, "ingenious" jungle traps, and some of his own personal journeys that were surrounded with death. One of the first things he told me was that through out his entire time in Vietnam he lost each and every member of his original platoon of 13 men including himself. That was just the first tale that shook me to my core. I never realized just how lucky he was to make it out of there alive. Another story he told me was when he was asked by a group of men dressed in black to accompany them for a ride to transport Vietnam POW's on a chopper. He continued to tell me that once they were in the chopper these men began to interrogate these prisoners in Vietnamese and one by one as they were in interrogating these POW's the men in black would throw each man out until there were none of them left. My father just sat there and watched while this was occurring and thought to himself afterwords that these men must have not gotten the information that they wanted from the prisoners. Later on in our conversation he told me that the men dressed in black were members of the CIA. My fathers experiences in this story made me think, how do some people get to the point of bringing death upon another so easily? Why do we as humans constantly struggle for dominance over each other, I constantly ask myself why is war in our blood? I guess its just part of being human.
The second person I interviewed was my 29 year old brother. I asked him about his experiences with Illness & Dying and he began to remind me about his old friend Tommy Hayes who died of a drug overdose as a result of PTSD from serving in the Army in Iraq. My brother told me he couldn't deal with what he saw and took part in while he was over there fighting, so he turned to drugs to get away from it all and it took him away from this earth. Being reminded of Tommy made me a little emotional at the time, but as well created me to think to myself. The act of committing suicide, why would someone do this to themselves? I can comprehend the aspect of using drugs to get away from what your thinking about but you should seek help if you have a hard time dealing with the things you have seen or that bother you. It strikes me as absurd that the amount of people in this world that don't reach out to other's for help and take their own problems into their own hands. I've come to the conclusion that when man is faced with a problem that they see no solution and can't destroy he will destroy himself. Why do some of us work like this and others don't? There are so many questions that will never be answered about human kind, maybe one day we will figure them out.
The third part of my project I decided to do a little research of my own online. I read an article about a soldier who classified by another soldier who was a medic as having mental problems after fighting in iraq and the soldier was not admitted to a psychiatric evaluation. Now because of this soldier not being evaluated as a result he killed one of his Army buddies by stabbing him 32 times and burning his body. Now this soldier had a severe case of PTSD just like my family friend Tommy Hayes. After reading the entire article I understood and came to the conclusion that our leaders in the US military have a serious problem in controlling and finding solutions of soldiers developing PTSD from serving on the front lines. What I discovered was that large amounts of soldiers are going through these problems and the cases of mental illness's and dying is only progressing as the years go on. What I've come to think of after taking all of this in is that we have a serious problem on are hands with our Military and the care of our men and women who serve our country with their lives. We need to find a better way of figuring out a solution to all of this. It saddens me that people join the military not knowing of these issues at hand and then get caught up in all of this.
What I learned from all of this is that there are many unanswered questions about the human race that will remain unanswered for who know how long. As well what I've learned is that the military promotes an atmosphere of illness and dying. If you don't know how your going to be able to handle this type of environment then you shouldn't even think of putting yourself in a place where all of these horrible things have the possibility of getting to you. Dealing with illness all around you, witnessing death in the masses, and living with your friends committing suicide are all aspects of illness & dying that are dominant social practices in our culture as humans. For centuries we have all gone through this, every where through out this earth. These things show although we have been doing these things like rituals for centuries we are an ever changing people that will one day find explanations for these problems and ways to create solutions to make them happen less than more often as in todays earth. These things matter because these practices are the results of our interactions with one another and until the day we can figure out a resolution to act civilized to each other things such as these will only continue to occur and more of our people will continue to die for nothing.
PS: I had a insight that I thought was relevant to this project: Suicide can be defined as a permanent solution to a temporary situation.
Citations:
- http://www.gsfso.org/PTSD.html
- http://www.gsfso.org/Suicide.html
The second person I interviewed was my 29 year old brother. I asked him about his experiences with Illness & Dying and he began to remind me about his old friend Tommy Hayes who died of a drug overdose as a result of PTSD from serving in the Army in Iraq. My brother told me he couldn't deal with what he saw and took part in while he was over there fighting, so he turned to drugs to get away from it all and it took him away from this earth. Being reminded of Tommy made me a little emotional at the time, but as well created me to think to myself. The act of committing suicide, why would someone do this to themselves? I can comprehend the aspect of using drugs to get away from what your thinking about but you should seek help if you have a hard time dealing with the things you have seen or that bother you. It strikes me as absurd that the amount of people in this world that don't reach out to other's for help and take their own problems into their own hands. I've come to the conclusion that when man is faced with a problem that they see no solution and can't destroy he will destroy himself. Why do some of us work like this and others don't? There are so many questions that will never be answered about human kind, maybe one day we will figure them out.
The third part of my project I decided to do a little research of my own online. I read an article about a soldier who classified by another soldier who was a medic as having mental problems after fighting in iraq and the soldier was not admitted to a psychiatric evaluation. Now because of this soldier not being evaluated as a result he killed one of his Army buddies by stabbing him 32 times and burning his body. Now this soldier had a severe case of PTSD just like my family friend Tommy Hayes. After reading the entire article I understood and came to the conclusion that our leaders in the US military have a serious problem in controlling and finding solutions of soldiers developing PTSD from serving on the front lines. What I discovered was that large amounts of soldiers are going through these problems and the cases of mental illness's and dying is only progressing as the years go on. What I've come to think of after taking all of this in is that we have a serious problem on are hands with our Military and the care of our men and women who serve our country with their lives. We need to find a better way of figuring out a solution to all of this. It saddens me that people join the military not knowing of these issues at hand and then get caught up in all of this.
What I learned from all of this is that there are many unanswered questions about the human race that will remain unanswered for who know how long. As well what I've learned is that the military promotes an atmosphere of illness and dying. If you don't know how your going to be able to handle this type of environment then you shouldn't even think of putting yourself in a place where all of these horrible things have the possibility of getting to you. Dealing with illness all around you, witnessing death in the masses, and living with your friends committing suicide are all aspects of illness & dying that are dominant social practices in our culture as humans. For centuries we have all gone through this, every where through out this earth. These things show although we have been doing these things like rituals for centuries we are an ever changing people that will one day find explanations for these problems and ways to create solutions to make them happen less than more often as in todays earth. These things matter because these practices are the results of our interactions with one another and until the day we can figure out a resolution to act civilized to each other things such as these will only continue to occur and more of our people will continue to die for nothing.
PS: I had a insight that I thought was relevant to this project: Suicide can be defined as a permanent solution to a temporary situation.
Citations:
- http://www.gsfso.org/PTSD.html
- http://www.gsfso.org/Suicide.html
Thursday, December 9, 2010
HW 21b-Comments
Comment number one to Lora:
Personally I like how you in the middle of your post stated all of the main parts of Beth's story. As well something that you could of expanded on in your post was your third insight that" It also opened my mind more in the fact that if i am sick that i cant just not admit it to myself i have to take the next step and see a doctor and what i can do to get better." I think you could of expanded this one and go a little deeper and maybe put your self in a practical situation and discuss it a little more. But otherwise for the most part I feel that you gave a good output of your own feelings and insights on the topic.
PS: Watch your grammar and sentence wording in your first paragraph.
Comment number two to Jayson:
Jayson I liked how in your last paragraph you stated how Ms. Wood's presentation pushed you to think about the time we have available with our loved ones and how it could be cut short at any time and we should appreciate it. Although you have a great insight here I would suggest that you elaborate more on your insight by giving a personal example from your own life. Maybe someone in your family has passed away, give an example. To give you an idea of what I mean I try to spend a good amount of time with my grandfather because he's in a declining condition with his breathing problems from old age and smoking. It's something as simple as sharing a small part of your family with others to make a point and I feel that this would bring out your insight in a more vibrant fashion making your writing better.
Personally I like how you in the middle of your post stated all of the main parts of Beth's story. As well something that you could of expanded on in your post was your third insight that" It also opened my mind more in the fact that if i am sick that i cant just not admit it to myself i have to take the next step and see a doctor and what i can do to get better." I think you could of expanded this one and go a little deeper and maybe put your self in a practical situation and discuss it a little more. But otherwise for the most part I feel that you gave a good output of your own feelings and insights on the topic.
PS: Watch your grammar and sentence wording in your first paragraph.
Comment number two to Jayson:
Jayson I liked how in your last paragraph you stated how Ms. Wood's presentation pushed you to think about the time we have available with our loved ones and how it could be cut short at any time and we should appreciate it. Although you have a great insight here I would suggest that you elaborate more on your insight by giving a personal example from your own life. Maybe someone in your family has passed away, give an example. To give you an idea of what I mean I try to spend a good amount of time with my grandfather because he's in a declining condition with his breathing problems from old age and smoking. It's something as simple as sharing a small part of your family with others to make a point and I feel that this would bring out your insight in a more vibrant fashion making your writing better.
Monday, December 6, 2010
HW 21 - Expert #1
Insights:
-The fact that at any moment you could be diagnosed with any disease that would change your life is just breath taking to me. Its amazing that you could be plagued with a death sentence at any point in time of your life. In Beth's case this sad sadistic occurrence fell upon her family. I find it hard that Beth even had the courage and will power to share her feelings on her husbands cancer. What was going through my head as she shared such personal parts of her husbands problems was why? Why would she get in front of a class of almost 30 students and tell us the story of his last few months and how it effect her and the rest of her family? What could doing this possibly help her with? I have such a hard time discussing my own family losses in general with anyone.
-When my cousin Richard died, god bless him, but my family and myself was devastated and would never even think of talking to a group of high school students about the experience of us going through that as individuals. Beth's experience of sharing with us her stories gives me ideas of letting my feelings and thoughts and experiences out about my lost love ones. The reason being is she gives me courage in doing so because of her being able to share her own personal family tragedies. So maybe one day if I think about Beth's stories I to will decide to share my stories of my lost loved ones and not feel scared or not in the right state of mind to go through with it.
-The fact that at any moment you could be diagnosed with any disease that would change your life is just breath taking to me. Its amazing that you could be plagued with a death sentence at any point in time of your life. In Beth's case this sad sadistic occurrence fell upon her family. I find it hard that Beth even had the courage and will power to share her feelings on her husbands cancer. What was going through my head as she shared such personal parts of her husbands problems was why? Why would she get in front of a class of almost 30 students and tell us the story of his last few months and how it effect her and the rest of her family? What could doing this possibly help her with? I have such a hard time discussing my own family losses in general with anyone.
-When my cousin Richard died, god bless him, but my family and myself was devastated and would never even think of talking to a group of high school students about the experience of us going through that as individuals. Beth's experience of sharing with us her stories gives me ideas of letting my feelings and thoughts and experiences out about my lost love ones. The reason being is she gives me courage in doing so because of her being able to share her own personal family tragedies. So maybe one day if I think about Beth's stories I to will decide to share my stories of my lost loved ones and not feel scared or not in the right state of mind to go through with it.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
HW 19 - Family Perspective on Illness & Dying.
My fathers opinion on Illness and dying:
"My own father died of a heart attack and he died within minutes of a heart attack and although it was shock because he was at a such a young age and it happened so quickly, he was healthy one minute and dead the next. Now compared that to my mother whom had a rare brain disease and died slowly over two years reverting or going back to a helpless infant. When I look at both of these ways i would rather die in minutes. It was much more difficult to watch someone you love to die slowly deteriorating in front of your eyes and you cant do anything about it and my mother gave me the power of allowing her not to be put on tubes , not to be kept alive artificially and die in her own home which was her wish. so for use we lived up to her wishes and we felt she made the right decision because it was what she wanted and it to us it was more comforting , we all knew the outcome it wasn't a secret. We were happy we could live up to her wishes and we allowed because we had the power so the doctors couldn't put on life support, she felt when the time was ready she would die. to think about we could of prolonged her life another six months but she would of suffered. It was an incurable disease to this day it is still an incurable disease. It slowly paralyzed her entire body. The disease today is still incurable to this day."
"When my grandfathers died in those days they were considered old 65 to 70 years old they just died. One died of cancer the other one died in a car accident. In those days there was nothing you could do for cancer. After you have the funeral their buried, then what could you possible do they are gone. You miss you love them but now they are gone, all you can do is remember the good times with them you can miss them but their really isn't anything you can do. Fortunately you remember them but life has to go on. You can remember the good times, remember the fun you have with them, remember the things they said. But life goes on."
"My sister had lung cancer which was a life changing experience for her because she was cured. she lived with fear of knowing that she could possibly die and then found out that she was one of the lucky ones that the doctors were able to cure. But she still worries about the cancer coming back and killing her. therefore this experience that she has gone though was a life changing experience. She goes thorough life now looking at things differently, she doesn't sweat the small stuff, in other words she realizes that having good health is probably the most important that a person could have. Without good health either your gonna suffer for the rest of your life or and what frightens her the most was knowing that lung cancer is a very horrible way to die. Its a very long and slow process. Im sure she knows had they not been able to cure her that it is a very horrible death, you suffocate to death, you suffer is really the bottom line there because its a slow death. Some people suffer for years and then die its painful, its a terrible way to die , some of these diereses are just horrible."
"My own father died of a heart attack and he died within minutes of a heart attack and although it was shock because he was at a such a young age and it happened so quickly, he was healthy one minute and dead the next. Now compared that to my mother whom had a rare brain disease and died slowly over two years reverting or going back to a helpless infant. When I look at both of these ways i would rather die in minutes. It was much more difficult to watch someone you love to die slowly deteriorating in front of your eyes and you cant do anything about it and my mother gave me the power of allowing her not to be put on tubes , not to be kept alive artificially and die in her own home which was her wish. so for use we lived up to her wishes and we felt she made the right decision because it was what she wanted and it to us it was more comforting , we all knew the outcome it wasn't a secret. We were happy we could live up to her wishes and we allowed because we had the power so the doctors couldn't put on life support, she felt when the time was ready she would die. to think about we could of prolonged her life another six months but she would of suffered. It was an incurable disease to this day it is still an incurable disease. It slowly paralyzed her entire body. The disease today is still incurable to this day."
"When my grandfathers died in those days they were considered old 65 to 70 years old they just died. One died of cancer the other one died in a car accident. In those days there was nothing you could do for cancer. After you have the funeral their buried, then what could you possible do they are gone. You miss you love them but now they are gone, all you can do is remember the good times with them you can miss them but their really isn't anything you can do. Fortunately you remember them but life has to go on. You can remember the good times, remember the fun you have with them, remember the things they said. But life goes on."
"My sister had lung cancer which was a life changing experience for her because she was cured. she lived with fear of knowing that she could possibly die and then found out that she was one of the lucky ones that the doctors were able to cure. But she still worries about the cancer coming back and killing her. therefore this experience that she has gone though was a life changing experience. She goes thorough life now looking at things differently, she doesn't sweat the small stuff, in other words she realizes that having good health is probably the most important that a person could have. Without good health either your gonna suffer for the rest of your life or and what frightens her the most was knowing that lung cancer is a very horrible way to die. Its a very long and slow process. Im sure she knows had they not been able to cure her that it is a very horrible death, you suffocate to death, you suffer is really the bottom line there because its a slow death. Some people suffer for years and then die its painful, its a terrible way to die , some of these diereses are just horrible."
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