I'm heading off to work but before jumping in the car on the blog we are going to do the obvious.
First obvious article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110207/us_yblog_thelookout/teaching-kids-social-skills-pays-off-in-grades
Of course if kids are happy they are going to do better in school.
Obvious article number two:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110208/ap_on_he_me/us_med_healthbeat_end_of_life
I know if I was in their shoes I'd want the truth. With the truth you can plan. Why would not telling the truth even be a consideration?
On to obvious article number three:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110204/ap_on_he_me/us_med_stuttering_movie
You all know I loved THE KING'S SPEECH. When I left the movie my reaction was that the movie was sure to bring the positive to stuttering. Not shocking in my book.
Comment at will.
WHO AM I?
I was born in 1891 and died in 1960. I was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. I have published four novels and more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays. I was the fifth of eight children. My father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer, and carpenter, and my mother was a school teacher. My mother died when I was thirteen. My father and new stepmother sent me away to boarding school but eventually stopped paying my tuition and the school expelled me. I later worked as a maid to the lead singer in a traveling Gilbert & Sullivan theatrical company. I did undergraduate studies at Howard University co-founding the student newspaper. I left Howard and was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where I was the college's only black student. I received my B.A. in anthropology. As an adult I traveled extensively in the Caribbean and the American South and immersed myself in local cultural practices to conduct her anthropological research. I married a jazz musician and former classmate when I was 36 but the marriage ended after four years. I would later marry again but that marriage also ended. During a period of financial and medical difficulties I was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where I suffered a stroke and died of hypertensive heart disease. In 1937 I was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti. My work slid into obscurity for decades, for a number of cultural and political reasons.Many readers objected to the representation of African American dialect in my novels, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. I opposed the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education. I felt that if separate schools were truly equal educating black students in physical proximity to white students would not result in better education. Did you ever wonder if EVERY TONGUE GOT TO CONFESS? If you have you may be able to answer the question, Who Am I?
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7 comments:
Telling patients the truth about their prognosis is absolutely required in my book. But it can be a minefield for a doctor, I'm sure, since some patients probably just don't want to know if they are terminal. I'd want to know, and I'd want a serious discussion of my options.
I look forward to THE KING'S SPEECH on DVD. I know a man who developed a stutter somewhere in his late 30s after his parents died. It went away in time, but was replaced later by a weird little throat-clearing tic when he had another personal crisis of some kind. Happily, that one is now gone also; he's retired, happily married and tic-free, even after coping with a year of his wife's serious illness (she is well now). It was sad but interesting to watch those changes as they occurred.
Hi Pat
I'd also want to know and want my options discussed and would also want to know about alternative treatment.
My cousin Renee stuttered but she had a beautiful singing voice and never stuttered when she sang. The King's Speech is a movie I highly endorse on DVD or in the theater.
Interesting story about your friend. Stress can cause stuttering.
Bill
Great articles. I think there's another aspect to the social skills teaching in school. Yes, they may be happier. However, I also suspect it increases their self confidence and feelings of self esteem and when those are enhanced, one "knows" one can do good work and succeed.
I agree with you about knowing the truth, although I also think it's an individual issue and involves the family, not just the patient. Personally, if I've got a terminal illness, I want to know. I want to know the prognosis, I want choices, I want information to make decisions. That said, when Walt was diagnosed with cancer, he spent most of his time in denial. He didn't want to know anything, except they were doing something to make him better. If a doctor tried to talk to him, Walt would usually cut him off, one way or another. Ergo, we'd see the doctors, then the doctor and I would talk privately, either in another room, in the parking lot or later on the phone (we had wonderful doctors!) and the same was true of the Hospice nurses. Walt didn't want to know. I needed to know, so I could make decisions (he wanted no part of that process, either), look ahead, consider options. I do think docs are very uncomfortable talking about the possibility or eventuality of death. They're trained to be healers and if they can't heal, many have a feeling of failure, something I learned in researching the cancer book. So, I agree, doctors should tell the truth, but they also need to be sensitive to the patient's feelings and determine who is able to hear the truth and help with the planning.
I'm so pleased to see the positive results of "The King's Speech." I'm trying to remember the singer, with golden records, who had such a stutter and I can see him and the name is just out of reach... ah, Mel Tillis. When he sang, you'd never know he had any kind of speech problem.
Finally got my response posted, but had to go around my left elbow - has Google changed something?
Btw, for any lurkers who have NetFlix, Himself tells me it's readily available there, as a direct feed
Hi DR
Good point about the self esteem and self confidence of people socially adept.
Cancer is a family disease and it probably should be a family decesion. Interesting reaction by Walt and it makse me wonder if he was really frightened and most frigtened of leaving you. Death isn't easy to talk about for anyone.
That seems to be a common thread with stuttering, it doesn't happen when people are singing.
Bill
DR
I am sorry you had problems with the blog, if I had been home today instead of at work I would have tried to figure out the problem. I am gad you got to post!
Bill
Not to worry about the posting issue. It finally worked. And I didn't post until late tonight, so it wasn't like it would have made a difference if you weren't working - you'd have been home, most likely.
As to Walt... he was largely non-confrontational about just about anything, with the exception of his flash backs to VietNam, then it was "Katie bar the door." Denial isn't all that uncommon for individuals who have terminal illness. I had thought about it be frightening for him to face the issue of death, but not about him being frightened or concerned about me as a contributing issue. Interesting.
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