On health care... and wanderlust.

Today I was attempting to finish The American Health Care Paradox, and it was going very slowly, but I did find a documentary to watch, (bonus!) so I’ll write about that next week!

In other news, I may have found a place to stay in Stockholm, YAY! :D

Okay, back to our health care system.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Our country seems to be very good at this.  We talk about wanting to improve our health care system yet we cannot escape the grips of our need for money.  We want to have an equitable society, but how do we expect to do that unless we let go of capitalism.  (That’s not happening anytime soon. At least I don’t think so…)

But here’s to dreaming!  I’d like to think that someday, I will change our world for the better. 

Below is a quote I found in The American Health Care Paradox which I find very interesting:

“If our system was honest with itself, it doesn’t want you to die and it doesn’t want you to get well.  It just wants you to keep coming back for your care.”

- Journalist Shannon Brownlee

It’s actually from the documentary Escape Fire which I will be watching later today. J

Check out the trailer for the documentary on the right side of my page!

Finding this documentary makes me miss the community I had last summer at Xavier, and makes me miss being in Brockman Hall with my fellow SSI interns.   Sharing a documentary like this was something that always brought excellent discussions, many frustrations, and best of all, a call to action. 

On the subject of wanderlust, I’m finding my excitement to see Sweden and Amsterdam growing each day.  I’ve been reading my fellow fellow’s blogs about their travels and it ignites my desire to see the world.  That “closeted adventurer” within me is dying to get out and see the world.  I’m so lucky I get to travel.

I have to remind myself that. I am lucky. What new college grad gets to do what they want for the summer and then travel to two amazing countries?

I was thinking earlier today, “why isn’t there a Buzzfeed quiz for ‘What grad program should you go into?’ for me to take to help me figure out my future.  I wish life was easy like that.” :P

Life isn’t easy.  It is an adventure.   

“Our lives are not our own.  From womb to tomb, we are bound to others, past and present.”

- Cloud Atlas

The Privilege of Love

It is truly a privilege to love and be loved. 

Yesterday, I celebrated my 22^nd birthday.   It was nothing like any other birthday I had celebrated, but that’s what I like about my birthday.  Every year I get to celebrate in a different place, with a different group of people.

And every year I’m reminded just how loved I am.

As I was driving across the state of Ohio, (something I did twice in the last week, I know route 71 like the back of my hand!), I was reflecting upon the privileges of mother- and daughter-hood. 

I’ve had the most intriguing, educating, emotional conversations with my mother, and I know now that those conversations are something that I will cherish years from now. 

I know that my mother had similar conversations with her mother that she cherishes.  But today, it is hard to see that those things meant anything. 

Alzheimer’s has a terrible price, and the memories that make up a person are lost little by little.  The memories that my mother has are painful because they cannot reminisce together.   We are a collection of our memories, carrying knowledge from decades before us into our future.

The memories of this world are being lost.  With each day we lose a little more of the knowledge that was passed down to those with AD.  Ask your grandparents about the world they knew, you’d be surprised how excited and willing they are to tell you stories.

Those stories, their memories, will enlighten your future. 

Of Means and Ends

In The American Health Care Paradox, specifically the “Learning from Abroad” chapter (which focuses on Scandinavian countries, a convenient coincidence for me!) an excerpt from an interview with a Danish Health and Medicine Authority states:

“People should know that health is not the goal of life.  But health is definitely a means that you can use to choose exactly the life you want because if you don’t have health, then your possibilities… cannot flow and grow… We have also tried to work with the municipalities (to say) maybe you can use health, not because you want to make people healthy, but because health can then also help people learn better and it can help people in getting a job.”

However, even if I choose to pursue health so that I am able to choose the type of existence that I wish to lead, there is no guarantee that I will not get Alzheimer’s disease and forget all about the good life I led. 

I know, I brought it back to AD… but hey, while I’m questioning living a healthy life, the question that comes up is “why live a healthy life if it won’t matter because I’ll forget all about it?”

To that I must ask you, and remind myself, to live in the present.

I have absolutely no idea what next week will look like for me, and I’m trying to control what my future in 10, 20, 40 years will look like?!  (What am I thinking?)

This talk of means and ends takes me back to my Philosophy 100 class, and really makes me think about the goal of our healthcare system. 

If health is not the goal of life, then what is?

Fear and Love

Nothing terrifies me more than dying alone.  Dying in pain. 

It seems that I gravitate to things that make me uncomfortable though.

I’m terribly afraid of what the end of life will look like, so naturally, I’m studying it.

I have so many questions that I cannot answer, but I'm so eager to find those answers.

And for what?

So I can sit back and watch my life go by, instead of discovering it day by day?

(Which one sounds more fun to you?)

One quote from Dr. Byock’s book “The Best Care Possible” that I hope to grow into in the coming years as a professional is “to affirm life we must affirm all of life, including dying, death and grief.” (282).

I knew that nothing about this project would be easy or comfortable, I’m dealing with one of the most fragile periods of our lifespan, reading about death on a daily basis, along with other tragedies of dementia and AD diagnoses, and yet, all these lessons show me just how much love we have in the world.

How many caregivers do we have today?  How much love are they sharing with those they care for no matter how frustrating it may be.

“Most of us will be physically dependent and intimately cared for by others in the days before our death.  This fact does not destine us to become undignified, it simply confirms that we are human.” (Byock, 281). 

Caregiving is fundamental to human life.

Share the love.

Reflections on Mortality

Death.  It’s something no one wants to think or talk about; yet, it is one of the facts of this life.

We will all die someday.  We know that from birth. 

(I know, cheery subject, but it’s a dreary day here in Cleveland and I did pick this project.  You can imagine how depressing my Brueggeman discussions were on this topic.)

“Americans are afraid of dying.  And with good reason.  While rarely easy under any circumstances, we make dying a lot harder than it has to be.’ ‘When someone we love is diagnosed with a life-threatening condition, the worst thing we can imagine is that he or she might die.  The sobering fact is that there are worse things than having someone you love die.  Most basic, there is having the person you love die badly, suffering as he or she dies.  Worse still is realizing later on that much of his or her suffering was unnecessary.”

- Introduction to The Best Care Possible: A Physician’s Quest to Transform Care Through The End Of Life. By Ira Byock, MD.

This book, although I’ve just started it, has given me plenty of questions to contemplate.  Some of which are below:

How do we make the best of the worst part of life?

What does it mean to die well?

What does that look like in our world today?

How do we handle looking back on our lives and not feeling regret?

Are we able to let go of those we love? Can we allow ourselves to choose to not do something instead of “trying everything we can do” to prolong their life with a different standard of living?

How can we make letting go okay?

            All of our procedures include sustaining life for as long as possible to avoid the inevitable, yet, that could be doing more harm than good. 

In order to truly affirm life, one must affirm all of life – and that includes the part we call “dying”.   “Most people report that they would like to die at home, surrounded by loved ones, however only one fifth of our elderly die at home.  Over 30% die in Nursing Homes, and about 50% die in hospitals; most often after an ICU stay.  (Byock, 2012)

We must accept that death is a part of life and we must examine what it means to die well in our day and age.  It certainly looks different than it did in the Middle Ages, or the 1700’s, but we must come to terms with how to value a loved one’s life in the best way possible. 

How will you value the lives of your loved one's when they are near the end of their life?