Thursday, April 26, 2012

Reading Journal #4

If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care

What a nightmare!  The article relates what a conversation would be like if air travel worked like health care and one were trying to fly from point A to point B.  It highlights how none of the multiple systems and databases in health care operate on the same wavelength.  No one across health care platforms communicates, nearly identical forms must be filled out with a multitude of providers.  Health insurance is selective as to who and what it covers.  Multiple phone calls must be made to accomplish anything.

"This system is insane. It is fragmented to the point of incoherence. Record-keeping is stuck in the 1960s. Communication is stuck in the 1980s. None of the systems talks to the others. Everyone reinvents the wheel at every stage of the process. There is no pricing transparency."
How true.  Just the other day I was on the phone with my health insurance company who is billing me for an outrageous amount.  Didn't I already pay the co-pay?  Isn't that what the co-pay is for?  Why are there so many hidden fees, fine lines, and clauses?  Why can't health care work like air travel?!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Nap time? Yes, Please!

Well, who can deny the appeal of a nice refreshing nap?  Sure, it's inconvenient to the modern, non-stop world.  But are there health benefits?  Should time be allotted for napping during a work day?  Should napping be encouraged by doctors?  Is it really worth taking time out of our already busy, rushed days?  How do we take time, spare our precious, precious time to do something as frivolous as nap?

To nap or not to nap?
Napping
Napping:  Do's and Don'ts for Healthy Adults
Sleep Tips:  7 Steps to Sleep Better
The Sweet Science of Dozing
Nap Time!
Pros and Cons of Napping for Adults
Do You Take Naps?
The Role of Daytime Naps in Healthy Adults

For the photoessay, I would like to review the history and evolution of napping, as well as napping in different cultures.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Monday, April 2, 2012

Gertrude


            Her name is Gertrude, but we like to call her Gertie.  She is a 94 year-old, 142-pound woman who resides in a long-term care facility, a nursing home.  She has all the character traits that come to mind when you picture your typical nursing home resident.  She has short white-gray hair that she has permed and hairsprayed religiously on a weekly basis.  Her rolling walker has basket attached, which she keeps stocked with tissues and hard candies, the later of which she will never hesitate to give to you.  She will always try to take care of others before she does anything for herself.  She has been knitting the same rainbow scarf since I started working with her over a year ago.  She loves to tell stories of her youth.  Oh, and she will call you every name in the book before she finally comes to the right one.

            Gertie hasn’t always been the elderly woman I have grown to know and love.  She regales me with stories of her youth.  Gertie grew up the youngest child, with 4 older sisters.  In fact, this is how she remembers my name.  When she forgets, she starts naming all her sisters.

            “Evelyn?  Fay?  Doris?  Laura?”  She stops, knowing she has named the corresponding sister with whom I share a name.  This, of course, leads into a story about her older sister Laura.  Laura was the oldest of the 5 girls, and favored her youngest sister very much.  In their youth, Gertie would beg Laura to let her help with the chores.  Laura would teach her how to do housework, protect her, be her confidant.  She always smiles when she thinks of Laura.

            At the age of 19 she married her love, Henry.  They had 5 beautiful children, only 4 of which made it to adulthood.  Gertie is very proud of her large family, often indulging any ear willing to listen about how her daughters and some of her granddaughters are nursing.  She brags about how some of them care for children with cancer; how they are such warm souls to see such heartbreak day in and day out.  She talks about her great-grand babies in California.  Her walls, her bureau, her nightstand are all littered with pictures of a beautiful smiling family.

            I don’t think she sees very much of her family now that she is in a nursing home, but it doesn’t seem to bother her.  As her dementia progresses she talks to the pictures of her family as if they can actually hear and converse with her.  Even though she is developing these little quirks, she is still one of the lucky ones.  She is able to walk, just with a walker, not with someone trailing her around to make sure she doesn’t fall or try to walk out the door.  She is able to wash, dress, toilet, and feed herself, unlike many of her companions. 

            However, those same attributes that make her lucky, also, in a sense, make her unlucky.  She is more aware of her surroundings.  She is aware that the people around her do have to be fed, changed when they inevitably soil themselves, and have very free will.  She sees all this, yet there is nothing she can do about it.  This is where Gertie’s nerves get the best of her. 

            “I’m just a bundle of nerves,” she confesses.  “That’s what the doctors used to tell my mother.”  And its true.  She struggles with the frustration of being forgetful, but not forgetful enough to forget she is forgetting.  She gets anxious when its getting close to bedtime and she hasn’t been given a shower yet.  She gets all worked up when she has a confrontation with other residents about the amount of bingo cards they are allotted.  She gets agitated when she needs something and she can’t find an aid to instantaneously cater to her every whim.  It drives her absolutely up a wall when she sees a fellow resident at the nursing home getting made fun of.

            Gertie lives for the activities they have at her home.  Boy, do they have a lot of activities.  Daily, from right after breakfast to right before dinner, her days are jam-packed.  Activities can range from arts and crafts to exercise to trivia to tai chi. She gets to play bingo weekly, getting a quarter for every game won.  She makes little decorations they lay among the photos of her family, different ones for different holidays or seasons.  What Gertie enjoys is when they have people come in who sing and play instruments, sometimes they even have dancers.

            Although Gertie can claim many friends at her home, she only has one close friend, her roommate.  Her roommate’s name is Maria; she is a 89 year old who has Parkinson’s Disease.  Maria is one of the residents at the home that is unable to groom, feed, or toilet herself.  She relies solely on the people employed by the home, and Gertie makes it her job to ensure Maria is being well taken care of.  They spend evenings in their room chatting before they go to bed.  As Maria gets tired, Gertie goes off to find someone capable of helping her into bed.  They are always looking out for each other.

            Despite her medications, Gertie’s dementia is progressing.  She is becoming more and more forgetful.  She is loosing her filter that allows her to distinguish between right and wrong.  More often she can be seen with her shirt on backwards, or holding her pictures up to watch TV.  Despite those ever increasing moment where her mind is elsewhere, I will always remember Gertie as she asks me to tuck her in at night.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Reading Journal #2/3

The Other Labor Day

No word of a lie, after reading the first paragraph I could not read other sentence until I had ice cream in front of me.  So I trekked across the street in the freezing temperatures to obtain some ice cream from my neighboring Tedeschi store.  As I stood there debating between Ben & Jerry's Phish Food and S'mores I told myself that I will not be part of that 62% that have an increased risk of ovulation-related fertility problems because I didn't treat myself to two servings of ice cream a week.  I no longer have to consider ice cream a treat, but now a prophylactic treatment.

Now that I am situated inside my house eating my s'mores ice cream right out of the carton I can continue my reading.

The article Baby Lust describes the lengths some women, including the author will go to to conceive.  But some of the facts she stated, including the one regarding ice cream consumption are shocking.  I almost want to throw out all the yogurt in my fridge knowing that it may some day make it twice as hard for me to have a baby.

In the article Artificial Wombs, the scientist Liu is working with her team to create a viable artificial womb  that can aid women who cannot carry their own fetus.  She has started with artificial rodent wombs, though she has had limited success thus far.  None of her rodents have survived life outside the womb for more than a few days.  She has hope that she will have a successful rodent womb within the next few years, and a human womb closely after that.  In this day in age, I cannot say this technology is very surprising, and once accomplished it will hopefully will be a great tool for those couples who cannot have have a child traditionally, but still want one of their own flesh and blood.  However it could be a dangerous tool in the hands of those who are capable but do not wish to carry their own baby.

Monday, March 5, 2012

Reading Journal #1

House of Memories

A very emotional tour of this woman's house, this article almost brought me to tears.  I cannot imagine what she must be going through just walking around her house.  She questions whether a house is just a structure that houses us, or one that also houses our memories.  She tells us about her struggle with the sickness and eventual death of her husband just as they are starting their new life together.  She questions the effect moving out of the house would have on her memories of her time there.  As she guides the reader around the house she shows memories of events that have happened in specific locations.  She questions the effect moving out of the house would have on the memories made there.

I love how she uses vivid details to make the reader feel like they are reliving the memory too.  I can picture the rooms and the memories, the pain of dealing with the loss of her young husband.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Ethnography brainstorm

I may have more readily available resources at my fingertips since I am a nurse, and my mom is a nurse.  But here are some ideas:

ER waiting room
Nursing home
Dementia unit
Rehab facility
Hospital
School nurse's office
Dr's office
Support groups
Military medical group

Here are some people that could be profiled:
Doctor
Nurse
CNA
Patient
Therapist
Military medical staff
People with certain illnesses/ailments
Support staff at medical facilities

Here are some sample ethnographies:
http://soc.sagepub.com/content/27/4/591.abstract