Wrapping It Up!!

Well, I guess it's over. I must admit that when I first heard that we would be blogging this semester, I was a little worried. I had never blogged before and had no idea what I was doing. However, throughout the past ten weeks, I have figured out that blogging can be therapeutic. I have also learned to think critically, more with this assignment than any other assignment in my past. While I have never had anyone close to me live with a terminal illness or die of a terminal illness, I have learned so much more about it than I ever thought I could. At the beginning of this assignment, it was my goal to tell different aspects of my neighbor's story each week and then introduce everyone to him at the end. However, due to his terminal illness, he became very sick after the first week and is now struggling to stay alive. However, while writing this blog, I have tried very hard to think critically about the different aspects of terminal illness that I thought he may have faced, paying particualr attention to middle adulthood. So after thinking about terminal illness in middle adulthood, almost daily, for ten weeks, I have made some conclusions. First, terminal illness does not discriminate. There are people of every race, age, gender, culture, socioeconomic class and religon affected by terminal illness. Second, terminal illness affects everyone involved, not only the person with the illness, but also their family and friends. The list goes on and on but these are the two most important lessons I learned while writing this blog this semester. I want to thank everyone for thier comments and for going through this learning process with me. Take care and see you all next year!!!!

Emotional affect of Terminal Illness in Middle Adulthood

So, what I chose to write about in this blog kind of snuck up on me again. I was talking to my mother about how I wrote about her friend that died of cancer in my last blog. She was telling me that the most difficult part of watching her friend go through cancer was how much it changed her. My mother said that her friend, Faye, was one of the strongest, most determined people she ever knew in her life. She said that throughout the majority of her illness she knew without a doubt that she would "beat it". My mother was saying that Faye was very optimistic about the illness and about her ability to come out of it on top. Faye was one of those people that succeded at whatever she put her mind to. She was always very successful at everything else she attempted in her life and had no doubt that this obstacle would be any different. My mother told me that until three weeks before she died, she maintained this attitude. When she finally knew the fight was over, she was so upset and viewed it as a battle that she lost. My mother was saying that watching Faye go from the confident, successful, optimistic person that she had always been was so hard. She said that it was like the illness broke her down piece by piece but it never prevailed until it broke her spirit. When I was listening to my mother talk about this aspect of terminal illness, it really got to me. For the family, it has to be so hard watching someone you love change, not only on the outside, but also lose parts of their personality that make them who they were. For the person living with the terminal illness, it has to be horrible to know that you have fought as hard as you possibly could and to no avail. I wanted to write about this because it was a part of terminal illness that I had not even thought about yet. I am beginning to think I could write about this subject forever and never cover every aspect of it.

Missing out?

This week, while talking with my grandmother, there was an aspect of terminal illness in middle adulthood that I realized I had not addressed and that really made me think. My grandmother reminded me of my mother's friend that passed away from cancer when she was 37. My mother was with her for a few weeks before she died and my mother was saying that her friend was so sad and that she kept saying that she would have done so many things differently if she could do it over. While I'm sure that would be the case for most of us, my mother's friend was talking about how she concentrated so much of her life and love on her career and was so focused on being successful that she had a failed marriage and no children. She was saying that on one hand, she was happy that she was not leaving anyone behind but on the other hand, she was sad because she had no loved ones and had focused all of her attention on the wrong things in life. This made me think about the fact that, with a terminal illness comes time, although it is limited, it is still time to think and to ponder and to wish you could turn back the hands of time. This is an aspect of terminal illness that I think would be exceptionally difficult. I take for granted the ability that I have to desire something different out of life and to go out and make it happen and the majority of people with a terminal illness do not have that ability. Regret is a hard emotion to deal with and I just wonder how many people that do have a terminal illness live with regret.

Terminal Illness as it relates to The Sum of Us

For this blog entry, I chose to relate it to the film The Sum of Us that we recently viewed in class. Watching Jeff care for Harry reminded me of how my neighbor's mother cares for him. He is fifty years old and she baths him, helps him go to the bathroom, dresses him and even has to feed him each meal. While Harry did not have a terminal illness, he still required as much care as someone that does. The role reversal in The Sum of Us blew my mind. It was like overnight, Jeff became completely responsible for someone that used to be completely responsible for him. I think terminal illness encompasses these same issues, espicially in middle adulthood. I was talking to a hospice worker the other day and she was telling me how one of her clients right now is a 37 year old mother of two. The woman's children are 5 and 11 and the hospice worker was saying how the 11 year old helps her mother bath and gets her younger sister ready for school in the mornings and helps her dad get dinner ready in the evenings. The family just discovered the woman was dying in March and the hospice worker said that she will not live until Christmas this year. So basically this child went from having little to no responsibility 7 months ago to having more responsiblity than most adults. It just blows my mind, but then I wonder, what choice did Jeff have, what choice does this little girl have...it's your family and you conform and do what it takes to care for them.

When to let go....

First, I want to thank you all for your comments. I look foward to reading the comments from my blog each week that everyone leaves. So, I've been thinking pretty hard about what I wanted to discuss this week regarding terminal illness in middle adulthood and it was almost like the decision was made for me. My neighbor, the man with Lou Gehrig's disease, is not doing very well at all. His 19 year old daughter, that he raised alone, is close friends with my younger sister and she and my sister were talking this week. Her friend was very upset stating that her father's illness had taken a turn for the worse and that the doctors were telling she and her grandmother that he would not make it much longer. She was very sad while talking to my sister, however, she said something that really made me think. She said that she felt a bit guilty for wanting him to fight so hard to stay here with her, while he was in so much pain and was so tired of fighting. I began to wonder if this doesn't make it more difficult on the person with the illness. It is like they are the ones suffering, yet they still try to hold on for their loved ones. I have heard people say that their loved ones would not let go until they had their blessing. While I have never experienced this first hand, it did remind me of what my dad told me regarding my paternal grandmother's death in 2007. He told me that she had been in the hospital for a while and he went out of the country on business. He said that when she got to the worst point of her illness, she kept telling her nurses she wanted to see my dad. My dad said that when he got there, three days later, he told her that he loved her and that he would be okay and knew he would see her again and she immeadiately died. I would like to think that if I had a family member that was dying and I knew they were suffering, I would give them my blessing and try to put my feelings aside, in order to make them more comfortable with letting go; however, I think this goes back to one of those things where you have to experience it to truly know how you would react.

Terminall Illness as it Relates to The Upside of Anger

For this blog entry, I thought I would attempt to relate it to the movie we just viewed, The Upside of Anger. I loved this movie. I thought it was a great choice for this class. At first I had a hard time wondering how I could relate my blog topic of terminal illness in middle adulthood to this film. However, the more I thought about it the more I figured it out. Wether a person dies of terminal illness, of a freak accident or abandons their family, the family still has to deal with the loss. I suppose some of the emotions that they experience are different, being that with terminal illness you know the inevitable will occur, while with unexpected death, it catches the family off guard. However, I am not convinced this makes the loss any easier; the feeling is still there. In The Upside of Anger, Grey's family was devestated that he was gone; even when they thought he left with his secretary, they, especially Terry, experienced feelings of being lost without him as well as wondering if there was something else she should have done that would have stopped the events from occurring. I think families that deal with the loss of their loved ones through terminal illness always wonder if there is something else they could be doing to stop what is happening. They probably go through some of the same feelings of anger and helplessness that Terry experienced. I also thought about the fact that Terry's loss of her husband occurred when she was in middle adulthood. She had dedicated her life to her husband and did not know who she was without him. I think people that have loved ones, especially long time spouses, that die of a terminal illness probably experience some of these same emotions. They wonder what they are supposed to do without their spouse, especially if they have been caring for them for a long time. I think that no matter how the loss of a loved one occurs, the family will be lost as to how to move on from the loss.

Another part of terminal illness in middle adulthood, and at any age for that matter, that is very sad to me is how the social roles change when a person gets sick and cannot participate in activities as they used to. That is something I saw with my neighbor, that I wrote about in my first blog. My mom told me that when they were in high school, he was a football player as well as a very handsome man that was very popular. She told me that he was very active and had the best personality. He got married out of high school and had two children. He also had a great job, bought a house in a nice neighborhood, and was living what some would call the American dream. However, after he got sick, his wife left him and his friends stopped coming around. I remember seeing him sitting at the end of the driveway, in his wheelchair, waiving at cars as they passed. It seemed like when he had nothing these people considered valuable to offer; they did not want him to be a part of their life anymore. It was very sad to see that happen. Not only do terminally ill people have enough to deal with concerning their illness, but it seems as if they have little support as well as very little normalcy left in their lives after their illness reaches a certain level. I don't understand how someone can call themselves a friend or say they love someone and then leave them when they are needed the most.

For this blog entry, I chose to relate it to the video we recently viewed in class, The Namesake. As I was watching the film, it came to my attention that, although my blog topic and Ashoki dying are not excatly the same, the outcomes of each were very similiar. In the Namesake, when Ashoki died it came as a shock and a hardship for everyone involved. Ashoki's wife was absolutely devestated. She had never lived on her own and this was to be a different type of transition than she had ever experienced. She went from living with her parents, to getting married and living with her husband. However, even though she was going through her own personal devestation about her husband's unexpected death, she still had to be strong for her children. This has to be an amount of pressure that is nearly unbearable. I don't see how people do this. Maybe I can't see it because I don't have children of my own, but I find it very hard to understand. Like my last blog entry, I began to wonder if the fact that Ashoki was in middle adulthood made his death harder on his family. I was thinking that, although I am sure the sadness took precedence, Ashima was probably worried about how she would support herself finicially as well as emotionally. I suppose with terminal illness one may have more time to get their affairs in order, but I cannot imagine it makes the loss any easier on the family. However, with sudden death, such as Ashoki's, what is one's family to do? When I began to think about this, it scared me. I thought of my mother. My stepfather has always been the worker, while my mother was a house wife that stayed home with the children. If he was to die, I do not know what my mother would do. She depends completely on his income for survival. I wonder how many people actually experience this nightmare.

Terminal Illness in Middle Adulthood

When I chose my topic for this blog assignment, I chose terminal illness in middle adulthood because I wanted to tell my neighbor's story about how his life has evolved while dealing with terminal illness. I was supposed to interview him throughout the semester and when I asked him for his permission to do so he agreed, even agreeing to allow me to use his real name. However, this week he became ill and will be unable to do the interview with me so I decided to keep the same topic but broaden it some to include other stories as well as facts about terminal illness in middle adulthood.

Although terminal illness has to be an absolute horrible experience for anyone to go through, I wonder if it is any harder for middle aged adults. I do not want to come across like I think less of young people or elderly people with terminal illness because that is not the case, but for the purpose of this assignment, I am concentrating on middle adulthood. I have been thinking a lot about how it would be to have the responsibilities that most do in middle adulthood and discover you had a terminal illness. I say this because, like my neighbor, they may know what living life completely healthy is like. They most probably have a family at that age with a spouse and children that have depended on them. They may have worked and supported their family from the beginning and then not be able to anymore. They are responsible for so much and have to think about everyone they are leaving behind and the circumstances in which it is occurring. I think it would be bad enough to deal with the fact that you have a terminal illness, but having to watch your family hurt for you and grieve over you would make it much worse.

Terminal Illness in Middle Adulthood

I grew up living down the street from an absolute awesome person, his name is Mr. Bert Woodard . I was friends with his oldest daughter and always had a lot of respect for him because he was a single father. However, there was something different about my neighbor, he had Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," which is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. (ALS Association, 2004) While growing up, I saw my neighbor go from a healthy, strong, handsome man to a man that is completely dependent on his 80 year old mother to care for him. Over the years, his life has changed drastically, however, in many ways it seems as if he has become a stronger person. As his physical health deteriorated, it seemed as if his mental health as well as his will to live grew much stronger. Mr. Woodard has done some amazing things through the years and I'm very excited to have the oppurtunity to share his story with you all. While telling Mr. Woodard's story, which I think is very important, I am also going to attempt to relate the life course perspective to his life experiences. I want to show how his roles as a father, son, husband and friend have changed since his disease began.