Understanding of Pain and Suffering Essay Example for Free

Understanding of Pain and Suffering Essay Everyone has a different perception of pain and what it means to one’s state of health. Pain can be physical or psychological; it can also be acute of chronic. All pains and aches are a maker of some type of suffering. My understanding of pain and suffering mainly comes from previous experiences of from my own state of discomfort and also from observation of patients at work. After reading book titled â€Å"The Anatomy of Hope† by Dr. Jerome Goodman, I realized how little I really knew about pain and suffering. This lecture contains many stories of the prevalence of pain for patients during the course of illness. In having studied these readings, a newfound understanding of how pain works in the lives of people who are struggling with health concerns has helped to illuminate how I can be a better health service provider. Helping patients to find internal hope and faith can aid them in their struggle for health and improved quality of life. In one of the chapters entitled, â€Å"The Right to Hope†, the author talks about his colleague, George Griffin, a specialist in treating stomach cancer who ironically gets diagnosed with a terminal case of stomach cancer. Against the odds, George undergoes intensive and painful treatments in order to fight the deadly disease. As a physician, George had knowledge about the severity of this condition, but as a human, he wanted to live. As a result of his determination, he gathered all of his strength and pushed himself through intense chemotherapy as well as suffering during recovery from the painful surgery. I think George’s view that â€Å"all of us have natural fear of death, but his belief in God and in afterlife assuaged it† played an important role in his decision to undergo the treatment (Groopman, 62). His will to live, faith in life, and struggle for what is good and healthy was an extremely powerful aspect of his own treatment, and I commend him for enlightening others about the powerful gift of spiritual faith and hope. George survived, yet he endured a lot of pain and suffering along the way. Furthermore, George wanted to prove that there is always â€Å"inherent of the uncertainty in the behavior of even the worst diseases†. By working through his own illness, he disproved the negative prognoses by his own strength and willpower. Also, he wanted to â€Å"spark hope that went beyond clinical truth† (Groopman, 78). George’s battle with cancer taught me that perhaps it is more difficult to beat the odds if they are familiar to a person, but in the end heritage and faith can go beyond clinical expertise and assist someone in the fight for life. George won his battle with cancer but he proved that it is worth it to have hope under even the most extreme circumstances and it is part of the human spirit to let miracles happen (Groopman, 81). Another valuable story which assisted me in understanding the terms of pain and suffering when a patient is initially resistant in the struggle for hope is also written by Dr. Groopman and is entitled â€Å"Step by Step†. The reading is about a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patient named Dan. He refuses all the treatment and does not want to have hope in his cure. We find out later in the story that Dan based his decision on personal experience from the past when his veteran friend lost battle to cancer in spite of all the pain, suffering, and struggling he endured during his stay in ICU. Dan did not have medical knowledge and he did not want to undergo the same suffering and complications as his friend who eventually died. As time is running out, Dan’s symptoms tend to worsen, illustrating the patient’s hopeless experience of illness, not just the biology of the disease (Groopman, 93). Things change for Dan when Dr. Groopman changes his approach and tries hard to lessen Dan’s fear. He presents him realistic outcomes and knowledge about the treatments. I think he did marvelous job by telling Dan that everyone reacts to treatments differently, allowing Dan the chance to hope, increasing his faith and supporting the possibility of recovery. Eventually, Dan accepts treatment in steps as part of bargain and notices improvement. I think that Dan suffered in watching his friend fight and die, so he did not want to have false hope and fail. However, the support of a good health provider can assist even the most resistant patient in finding internal hope and strength, the personal power to fight an illness. I learned from those two stories that it is how we approach the subject of pain and suffering which can either strengthen or weaken a person. Constructive and positive interaction can work wonders in helping to dissolve destructive and negative thinking, helping to increase the chances of success and the alleviating pain and suffering. I also learned that the way we understand a concept can be altered by many factors, for example like in Dan’s case previous negative of experience. Seeing suffering and death and the failure of treatments can instill a sense of fear and hopelessness in a person, however, it is important to note that fear and hopelessness will not be helpful to anyone. George’s story was going against the odds and accepting pain and suffering as part of the journey. In my opinion, a healthcare provider can’t always just focus on the clinical presentations, one has to explore deeper into a people’s souls to what really troubles them, what can possible cause a delay in recovery, and help the person to find a reliable source of strength.

Genius Loves Company: Ray Charles :: essays research papers fc

Genus Loves Company: The Life of Ray Charles   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Musician Ray Charles is generally considered a musical genius, and is so in many fields. He has enormous success in jazz, blues, soul music, country and western, and cross over pop. Acknowledged as an expert vocalist, pianist, saxophonist, and all around-entertainer, Charles first burst into popular attention in the 1950s as the virtual inventor of soul music. Ray Charles once defined soul music, â€Å"[soul music] is when you are able to convey the meaning of a song and make people feel it, make them think, Oh, Ray, you must have had that experience because there’s no way you could have sung that song unless it happened to you.† (Jet Magazine)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Charles was born Ray Charles Robinson in Albany, Georgia, on September 23, 1930. His father, Bailey Robinson, was a mechanic and a handyman, and his mother, Aretha, stacked boards in a sawmill. His family moved to Greenville, Florida, when Charles was an infant. A neighbor gave Charles piano lessons after Charles taught himself to play at the age of three. This neighbor owned a small store that served as a juke joint as well. Charles not only took piano lessons in the juke joint, he also absorbed the blues, jazz, and gospel music in the juke joint. At the age of five, Charles saw his brother drown in the tub his mother used to do laundry, while his family struggled through the height of the Great Depression. Two years later, at the age of seven, Charles lost his sight to glaucoma. He stated his mother never allowed his to feel pity for himself. In an interview with Jet Magazine, his mother told him: â€Å"Ok, you’re blind. Now that just means there are at least two ways to do everything. You just have to find the second way†¦ Whatever happens to you is up to you†¦Ã¢â‚¬  His mother also told him: â€Å"You’re blind, you ain’t dumb. You lost your sight, not your mind.† Studying at the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind, he studied for nine years, learning composition and a number of instruments.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Upon leaving the school he worked in a number of settings with many different groups in the Florida area. (Salamone) â€Å"Learning to read music in Braille and play by ear helped me develop a damn good memory,† Charles said. â€Å"I can sit at my desk and write a whole arrangement in my head and never touch a piano†¦ There’s no reason for it to come out any different that the way it sounds in my head.

The Effect of Drugs on the Rock and Roll Culture

Music and drugs have gone together hand-in-hand ever since the explosion of rock and roll on the American culture in the sass's. Since then, many gifted performers have succumbed to drug-induced deaths, which Is why I feel that drugs negatively effected rock music. Many great pieces of art have been rumored to be created while under the influence of several drugs, or to be inspired by these drugs. Many artists over the years have used drugs as an excuse to escape their fame, and many have used different types of drugs for inspiration for writing pieces of music, or as for an â€Å"extra boost† for a live show.While drugs may have helped great works of art to be enjoyed by many, drugs are ultimately responsible for many untimely deaths of many great artists, who died before we could truly see their potential. The sass were an era unlike any other in American history both culturally and politically. Many new changes were being made at this time in our government, and with severa l tragic events occurring In what seemed to be a series of events (the assassination of JEFF, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jar. And Vietnam), the styles of music during this time often reflected the emotions of people. The lyrics of the music of the time were changing from simple love songs, to harsh songs about topics such as rebellion, protest, sex, and more increasingly, drugs. As psychedelic drugs became more and more popular in America, bands such as the Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead saw an immense increase in their number of fans, due to large amounts of people who had an affinity for this new, Jam rock style of music which was very popular with the psychedelic drug scene (â€Å"American Culture: 1960-1969†).Many artists at the time were coming out with albums dedicated to drugs, or albums whose intent was about drugs. One such album was The Beetles' SST. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which, In addition to including drug-oriented songs, presen ted a body of Interrelated pieces that constituted an organic whole. This is considered the first â€Å"concept album. † In a concept album, all songs contribute to a single effect or unified story.The Beetles' album was often considered to have been the first concept album, primarily because the title song, occurring In two versions, wraps around the rest of the album like bookends: however, most of the songs on that album are actually unrelated to one another (â€Å"Rock Music: The late sass and sass's: rocks golden age†). These new â€Å"concept albums† would come to dominate music over the next 10-15 years, as many new artists came to surface with music that mixed with drugs, and often provided fatal results.During the sass and sass, the influence of drugs in musical culture was at its peak. Woodstock; a three-day public concert that became notorious worldwide as a concert protesting the Vietnam War, was heavily saturated with drug usage. During this time pe riod, some of the most gifted musicians of the last 50 years died to drug elated problems. Those who were not dead by drug overdose, such as David Bowel and Alice Cooper became more popular due to their Increasingly bizarre and drug fueled stage antics.Artists at the time had been in tune to the restlessness of American college students, tenet primary announce, Ana Ana uses tenet audiences willingness to accept new ideas and new things as a way of promoting the â€Å"rock and roll lifestyle† of free love, new music, and of course, drugs. Many great musical masterpieces were produced during this time, as â€Å"concept albums†, such as The Who's â€Å"Tommy', and Pink Flood's â€Å"The Dark Side of the Moon†.Both of these albums proved to be wildly popular to both the band's fan following as well as the mainstream public, as rock music and drug usage seemed to blend together, and were becoming more accepted by the public as the norm (â€Å"Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock Music & Psychedelics in the sass†). Although everything so far seems alright; things take a turn for the worse. It unfortunately took a few tragic deaths to derail the change in public opinion that was happening at this time.The deaths of superstars such as Janis Joplin (a famous and talented singer who was a star at Woodstock, died of a heroin overdose), Jim Morrison (lead singer of The Doors, died after a heart attack brought on by drug abuse), and Jim Hendrix (considered to be one of, if not, the greatest guitarist of all time, death by choking after barbiturate abuse), brought a shock to the music culture, as seemingly more and more musicians were dying due to the abuse of drugs, day after day.It seemed as if the music and drug cultures were slowly drifting away from each other and out of the mainstream spotlight, until the sass when several new deaths involving musicians and drugs came into the limelight. Kurt Cabin considered by many to be the most talented musician of the last 1 5 years, committed suicide by shotgun, after using extremely high amounts of heroin. This event came as a shock to almost everyone not only in the music and drug worlds, but everywhere because Nirvana (Cabin's band) was becoming internationally known, partially the reason for Cabin's suicide.Heroin was an inspiration for Cabin, and while it may have helped him to produce his music, it ultimately lead him into the pitfalls of depression and caused the death of a great musician, and the breakup of an excellent, growing, nouns band with limitless possibilities. Another death that occurred in the sass due to drug overdose was Bradley Newell, the lead singer of popular southern California band â€Å"Sublime†, who died off heroin overdose.Sublime was another band with great possibilities to become a lasting force in the music industry, however, Newell decided to destroy himself and his family by forming a deadly habit. Many of the deaths that occurred in the sass con cerning drugs and rock and roll were mostly in the sass, a result of depression and heroin abuse, as heroin usage came increasingly popular with the mid-ass grunge movement, and more and more musicians starting to do it. The sass and sass were both eras of change and protest, Just in a different light.The sass were an era of psychedelic drug usage, where musicians were outgoing, and held Jam fests and large outdoor festival concerts, where the usage of drugs was permitted and most often encouraged. In the sass, music fans and musicians were using drugs as a way of protest and inspiration; however, the sass were a different case. In the sass, musicians often kept to themselves, as most deaths were due to a lethal mix of depression and previous mental problems and the addiction to dangerous street drugs such as heroin and cocaine (â€Å"Sex, Drugs N' Rock & Roll? Nah†).While the sass were an era of freedom, where individuals were encouraged to express themselves Ana level Trebl y, ten Ana Tolling were an era of oppression, where everyone was put together as one big piece, and in order for people to break free from this â€Å"piece† and establish themselves, they must do something groundbreaking or different than what is typically expected. Music and drugs have always been intertwined; however, this relationship has offered over time due to changes in the cultural and political atmosphere of the area during the time where sad music was created.The general publics feelings about certain events and policies at the time of occurrence is often what most influences how something will interact with something else (and in this case, the interaction of the drug culture and the music culture). During the sass and ass, many artists released experimental types of music and experimental albums simply because the material they were producing was groundbreaking, it was simply music that no one ad ever produced before.In the sass, artists were often trying to gain infamy for their music and for their uniqueness, not for the corporate material that the executives had packaged them to be. Drugs and music will always be related, as long as there is something to speak out against and someone, somewhere to speak out against it. People use music as a way of voicing their opinions, and thus drugs and music will remain related, and drugs will continue to influence the musical culture, despite the possibility of death or mental depression they can cause.

television addiction Essay - 1578 Words

Addicted to Television nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The temptations that can disrupt human life are often caused by pure indulgences. That which we most desire may ultimately harm and destroy us. For example, no one has to drink alcohol. Realizing when a diversion has gotten out of control, such as alcohol, is one of the greatest challenges of life. These excessive cravings do not necessarily involve physical substances. Gambling can be compulsive, leading to great financial distress; sex can become obsessive, often altering a persons mentality and behavior. However, one activity is repeatedly over-looked. Most people admit to having a love-hate relationship with it. It is America’s most popular leisure past-time, the television. It is†¦show more content†¦What causes our profound interest in the television? The amount of time that people spend watching television is astonishing. The average individual will devote three hours a day to watch television. At this rate, a person who lives to be 75 would spend a total of ni ne years in front of the television. Based on polls taken in 1992 and 1999, two out of five adults and seven out of ten teenagers said they spend too much time in front of the television; roughly 10 percent of the adults called themselves television addicts. To study the physical and mental reactions to television, scientists have conducted experiments monitoring brain waves, skin resistance and the heart rate of people watching television. After analyzing the data, scientists discovered that people viewing television reported feeling relaxed and passive. More relaxed than while reading a book. Studies have also shown that the relaxation caused from watching ended once the television was turned-off, but the feelings of passivity and lowered alertness continued. Viewers reported having difficulty concentrating after viewing than before. After playing sports or engaging in hobbies, people repot improvements in mood. After watching television, people report that their moods are about t he same or worse. One of the reasons that we are so attracted to the television is our â€Å"orienting response†. First described by Ivan Pavlov in 1927, â€Å" †¦ the orienting response is our instinctive visual or auditory reaction to anyShow MoreRelated Television Addiction Essay1004 Words   |  5 Pagesnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;For roughly sixty years television has been a part of most Americans lives. For some, it is mainly a source of information. For others, television takes on a much more significant role. Many Americans spend hours of their daily life in front of the tube, but are the people entwined in the plot of the average sit com., or are they trapped by the clutches of perpetual, mind- numbing entertainment. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Addiction is a strong word. It is now even consideredRead More Television Addiction Essay1028 Words   |  5 PagesTelevision Addiction Marie Winn makes a convincing argument that watching too much television can be considered an addiction. Television has become a way of life for most families. Television viewing is so overwhelmingly prevalent nowadays that living without TV is often considered an extreme deprivation. TVs are everywhere, whether you are in a hospital, auto shop, or in the dentist’s office, there’s always a television by the waiting area. It’s a useful tool to help you from the boredom ofRead More Television Addiction related to Children Essay703 Words   |  3 Pages According to Rita Dove, the author of â€Å"Loose Ends,† and â€Å"Television Addiction,† by Marie Winn. Both authors often share the same the views about television. But television addiction is more expressed in Ms. Winn’s essay. However, Ms. Dove speaks of a more personal experience with her daughter, and how the television is an issue in her household. Although, Ms.Dove says in her essay, â⠂¬Å"For years the following scene would play daily at our house: Home from school, my daughter would have her backpackRead MoreReview of Television Addiction is no Mere Metaphor Essay examples603 Words   |  3 PagesTelevision Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor Have you ever heard the expression love hurts? Sometimes its the things that we want most that can hurt us. In Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor, an article published in Scientific American on February 23, 2002 by Robert Kubey and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, we see how this expressions meaning has some truth to it. The things that we are addicted to are not necessities but are desires instead. Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi give the best exampleRead MoreTelevision Addiction1606 Words   |  7 PagesAddicted to Television The temptations that can disrupt human life are often caused by pure indulgences. That which we most desire may ultimately harm and destroy us. For example, no one has to drink alcohol. Realizing when a diversion has gotten out of control, such as alcohol, is one of the greatest challenges of life. These excessive cravings do not necessarily involve physical substances. Gambling can be compulsive, leading to great financial distress; sex can become obsessive, often alteringRead More The Negative Impact of Exposing Children to Media Violence Essay1448 Words   |  6 Pageswill limit the definition of (mass) media to television, and, subsequently, violent (mass) media to television programs that contain violent acts. By children, I will be referring to people of age 18 and below who live in the U.S., since this group is the focus of the majority of the research data that I have used. I will begin my argument by acknowledging a counter argument to my position. I will then go on to disc uss the negative effects of television on children. These effects include an increaseRead MoreThe Importance Of Television In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury997 Words   |  4 PagesYour average American spends 5 hours a day watching television. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction novel where the characters spend a majority of their time in their tv parlor. Taken as a whole, television is a source of evil in 2017. First, television poses a distraction from real life both in Fahrenheit 451 and in present 2017. In the chase scene, Montag demonstrates that people are so caught in television they forget or don’t know reality. It says on page 131,† With an effortRead MoreHow Technology Has Changed Our Lives1217 Words   |  5 Pageswatched a television. Televisions are so familar to many people. It is one of the blockbuster inventions of all time. Back in ten years ago, the television is how people get the news, and how they entertain themselve, not a computer. Computers in ten years ago were a comlicated machine to use. Even in the twenty first century, the computers or many other high technology machines have much more advance features than a television, but they can be seen as present-day duplicates of televisions. MostlyRead MoreViolence in the Media Essays684 Words   |  3 PagesFarnsworth was the true inventor of television in 1927. He had no idea that thirty-five years later his inventions would not only be in ninety percent of Americans homes, but also strongly effect everyone that watched it. Following the introduction of television into the United States, the annual homicide rate increased by ninety-three percent(Journal of the American Medical Association). With the invention of television came the job of broadcasting shows on to the television. Broadcasters soon found whatRead More Affluenza: An American Epidemic Essay examples852 Words   |  4 Pages affluenza is a compulsive addiction to shopping, which can be cured by spending less time consuming and more time enjoying life. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;As the majority of parents work longer hours then other parents did in the past to support their families, children are left at home under the supervision of a television set. The television set constantly teaches children how to be good consumers. Advertisements which appear on television are designed to make children