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.