HW 30 - Illness & Dying - Culminating Experiential Project

       Having explored a number of dominant social practices around illness and dying, I decided to focus on the morality factor of illness and the frameworks that a person must go through to make a decision that will determine his or hers existence on earth.  In the duration of my vigorous hour of researching, I came across the Suicide Tourist, which is about Craig Ewert's profound experience with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, an incurable disease that influences one to lose the ability to control the functions of the body, which pertains to muscle movements and nerve cells.  It is essentially a path towards paralysis and is ultimately a slow deterioration of your body's functions.  Only a mere bystander, I can only wish to truly understand the painstakingly events that must occur for one to be free of a terminal disease, in Ewert's case, ALS.
       Ewert's sad but riveting story allows us to gain insight on what we decide is morally right or wrong within the skirts of the controversial topic of physician assistance suicide and what is important to us.  Craig had to weigh out the longevity of the pain and suffering he would have had to endure in the predicted 2-3 years, had he not chosen to die, and how this decision would affect his children and wife.  In his last few days of living, he reasons, "At this point, I've got two choices.  If I go through with it, I die, as I must at some point.  If I don't go through with it, my choice is essentially to suffer and to inflict suffering on my family and then die--possibly in a way that is considerably more stressful and painful than this way.  So I've got death, and I've got suffering and death."  In an effort to better understand these words, I've interviewed five people, chosen at random, to ultimately reflect how one can make prudent decision, that is weighed downed by several variables: the suffering of the ALS holder, the suffering of family members, the desire for a "peaceful" death, the religious restraint that forbids committing suicide, stigmas, and several other aspects.
       In the interviews I conducted, the pain and suffering of the victim of ALS seemed to be a recurring factor in the process of deciding whether one should choose to commit suicide or prolong one's death.  However, the need for the ill person's caretaker to attend to tasks such as brushing one's teeth and moving one's limbs that should be done easily is somewhat of a burden among those who are given such responsibility according to Anna O' Connol, "I might feel as if I am compromising the life of the person who is taking care of me and feel a bit guilty about having to depend on others.  Also, just the mere fact that I am unable to do very many things that I used to be able to do would most likely depress me."  Through O' Connol's answer, we can see that the concept of having the depend on others, likely to be family members, is associated with a stigma because not being able to nurture oneself efficiently is considered a "physical deformity"(Goffman 4) and "an undesired differentness"(Goffman 5).  Among the several stigmas, we strive for uniformity and control, and this strive is present in our obsessive or rather, prevalent need to survive as implied by Abdullah Sarwar, "I am scared of anything that I have no control over. So if the only way to stop my suffering is death, then so be it."  Control over what happens to our body, the amount of pain that we receive, and the suffering that is inflicted onto our loved ones is of significance to us.  To the extent that, it may cause a person to "be more inclined to stay alive until the last moment" said Anna.  The absence of pain is what constitutes as a "peaceful death."
       Lastly, the dispute of whether committing suicide is morally right or wrong plays a big role in society but, is of little importance to Craig Ewert, as he is agnostic.  Ewert provides us with wise words that make us rethink the whether the dominant discourse of society, which believes physician assistant suicide is wrong, is correct: "There are people who will look at this and say: 'No. Suicide is wrong.  God had forbidden it.  You cannot play God and take your own life' But you know what? This ventilator is playing God.  If I had lived without access to technology, chances are I would be dead by now."  Having noted that, we can see how this connects back to previous insights made earlier in the unit, in that our society has made "biomedical research advances all in hoping to prolong dying and reduce the pain and suffering, loneliness, and humiliation that are perceived to accompany life prolonging" (Kaufman 26).  We have made death taboo, burying it in soil and decorating it with engraved stones.  Death is the cease of all thinking, functions in one's body, and most importantly, the nerves that allow us to perceive and feel pain.  This is certainly a factor in which we struggle to incorporate into the frameworks that are the building blocks of our decisions dealing with sickness and death.
       It's incredibly important, if not necessary, that we attempt to understand what influences our decisions dealing with illness and dying because in the future, we can spare ourselves from potential or maybe fatal consequences.  By exploring the dominant practices of illness and dying in our society, we can better understand how our society began to shape itself to make canny decisions as well as the inept decisions that are the foundation of our morals and values.  This culminating experiential project proved to be extremely enjoyable, productive, and helpful to me because I have "expanded my horizons," as cliche as it may seem.  I've gained insight on how we develop mental arguments that contradict each other that somehow mesh to create an over-arching decision that will more or less impact our lives.  Whatever decisions we choose to make in the event of something detrimental to our health, we are all headed to that obscure land of death.

    BELOW IS THE ENTIRE PROGRAM OF THE SUICIDE TOURIST

I highly suggest that you watch the entire 55 minute program.  It honestly proved to be informative and life-changing in my experience.

BELOW IS THE DOWNLOAD LINK TO THE DOCUMENTED INTERVIEWS I CONDUCTED

DOWNLOAD LINK

 Works Cited

-"ALSA." What is ALS?. N.p., 10/2008. Web. 15 Jan 2011. <http://www.alsa.org/als/what.cfm>.


-Lyon, Mary . "ALSA." Reasons for Living With ALS. N.p., 13/12/1998. Web. 15 Jan 2011. <http://www.alsa.org/patient/living.cfm>.


-"PBS." The Ewert Family Today Interview. N.p., n.d. Web. 
<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/ewert/>.


-PBS." The Suicide Tourist. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Jan 2011. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicidetourist/view/>.


-Goffman, Erving. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice Hall. NJ. 1963.


-Kaufman, Sharon R. And A Time To Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life. Simon and Schuster. New York. 2005.