Friday, March 26, 2010

The Right to Die

For some mystical reason, I have been hearing a lot of things lately about the right to die. I have always been pro-life and I have been strongly against suicide and euthanasia; I see people who wants to kill their selves as weak. My whole opinion about this mater had made a 180 degrees turn when I looked at this with the patient's perspective.

Imagine your self as someone diagnosed with a terminal illness, cancer for instance. There is no cure and your condition has gone for the worst. Your organs have started failing and you are always in pain. Don't you just want to have the option to end it all? You want to die with dignity and you don't want your last days writhing in pain or unconscious.

Euthanasia and Suicide is a moral dilemma indeed. We may discourage suicide but having the right to die (when all else fails) is a fundamental right by people. I have actually written a paper regarding the moral distress and posted it here but removed it for fear of having someone else steal my intellectual property.

The gist of my paper is actually this: moral euthanasia is when you just allow the disease run its natural course and allow the patient to die without having to endure futile treatments that will prolong life but will also force the patient to endure the pain and suffering that accompanies the disease.

We should not be afraid of death. There are times when death is more comforting than living.

****
Picture credits goes to Daily Mail

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Living in Poverty

At Foundations of Health today, we actually watched a documentary called "No Place Called Home". I really didn't feel like going to class today because I was just so stressed out, but I was glad I came as this documentary is very touching and it kind of makes you reflect upon certain things.

So the movie is about the Rice family and how they struggle to keep a roof over their heads. The Rice family are just one of the growing working poor in Canada. Kay Rice comes from a long generations of poor Canadians but she did a fantastic job raising 6 children who are healthy, smart, and morally upright. Society is ruthless to people like Kay and her children. She can't help it if she can't make enough money to support all of them. She does get jobs but she gets paid minimum wage she isn't educated. Society looks down on them and bully them for not wearing the clothes currently in fashion or for just being poor. Kay herself was beaten up and had to be sent to the hospital for she was wearing cheap, used clothes from the thrift store. The Rice family had been called disgusting and they weren't treated like human beings at all.

Some people would call the Canadian poor or the homeless bums; Bums who suck all of the taxpayers money, but on the contrary, Kay had never filed for welfare and she doesn't intend to file for welfare ever. The reason for this is that she'll lose the child benefits she gets and she doesn't want her children taken away from her.

One of the reasons why she can't escape poverty is that she has a hard time finding a roof over their head. Imagine, she pays $1000 plus for a home that is roach infested and unfit for residence. She is taken advantaged of because no one is willing to take her and her 6 children in as landlords fear that the Rice family will destroy the house that they will rent out to them. As Kay said, "No one wants to be poor and be looked down upon". I almost cried as I heard this because I share the same pain as her. She never did choose to be poor and she tries to get out of poverty but she just can't. Her children have great dreams and I wish that they achieve them.

Like Kay I really feel so bad and I get so angry whenever someone looks down at me. And as I have posted before, the only people who looked down at me were Filipinos.Anyway I won't go into the details of that anymore.I can on the other hand explain that in my desire to prove people wrong when they say that I'm a poor, cheap, contract worker, I actually made myself poor.

In Canada everyone is considered equal as everyone has the same opportunities and the same purchasing power. You can be just a mere taxi driver but you can afford to buy a big house. In my case, even when I'm still a university student and that I only work part-time, I was able to buy myself a 2010 Mitsubishi Outlander.Although I can afford to pay for my car, I'm considered poor because I'm using up more than 60% of my income.This is why I hate the Filipino mentality of social classes because in the end, trying to maintain a status quo will only bring unhappiness.

If people only minded their own business then people won't have to bother dressing up and buying expensive things to prove their worth because seriously: the amount of things you have don't define you as a person.

A Tribute to Male Nurses

If you are currently in the nursing profession, and you happen to be male, you’ve more than likely encountered some form of ridicule, whether it is the more innocuous, “Why would you decide to be a nurse?” to more troubling suggestions about your sexuality. In the movie, “Meet the Parents,” one of the main characters is a male nurse, and he is made of fun of throughout the film on account of his chosen career. While of course, nursing is a predominantly female-saturated profession—in fact, a national registry claims that women nurses outnumber their male counterparts 16 to 1—there are a growing number of males in an occupation that is rewarding on a personal as well as financial and professional level.
 
A nursing blog, AllNurses.com, recently talked about the history of nursing and included a list of famous male nurses. The first nursing school was founded in India around 250 B.C. The blog post quotes a primary source from the first nursing school, which was all-male, that reports men aspiring to be nurses should be “of good behavior, distinguished for purity, possessed of cleverness and skill, imbued with kindness, skilled in every service a patient may require, competent to cook food, skilled in bathing and washing the patient, rubbing and massaging the limbs, lifting and assisting him to walk about, well skilled in making and cleansing of beds, readying the patient and skillful in waiting upon one that is ailing and never unwilling to do anything that may be ordered."

The list of famous male nurses includes Walt Whitman, the eminent 19th century American poet, Friar Juan de Mena, the first nurse to ever administer service in the present-day United States, and James Derham, a slave who worked as a nurse in New Orleans in the 1700s. Derhem eventually earned enough money to buy his freedom, and he later became the first African-American physician in history.

For males choosing to pursue a career in nursing today, there are many resources that will enhance your growth in a female-dominated field. The American Assembly for Men in Nursing (AAMN) is one such organization which seeks to “provide a framework for nurses, as a group, to meet, to discuss and influence factors, which affect men as nurses.” The organization works toward promoting increased male representation in nursing as well. 

For more personal insight into the trials and tribulations of male nurses, read the article, “Male Nurses Need Respect, Too” featured recently on Travel Nursing Blogs .

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Kitty Holman, who writes on the topics of Nursing Schools. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: kitty.holman20@gmail.com.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

The Moment

As you all may have probably noticed, I'm a very lazy blogger. I am a procrastinator and a bum (I actually have work and school so that technically doesn't make me a bum, but I am LOL!). The only real times where I am able to write heartfelt and really well-thought posts is when I'm paid for it inspired to do so. Every now and then I get so engaged with my thoughts that I just think about them and when ever I deem it important or worthwhile I write about them in my blog. 

A blog for me is a way of expressing my self: a channel  for anger and happiness. Blogging helps me relieve the stress I encounter in every day life and it also helps me write "scholarly" as I always do research before writing anything (especially my nursing related posts, but I sometimes fail to cite my sources).

I have my moments when I just want to sit in a corner and type away all my feelings and thoughts but once that moment is gone blogging seems like a chore than something I enjoy...

The moment is gone... END

Home Made Pizzas Are Better!

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony's Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine.

To be honest, I have never made pizza from scratch all by myself. On the other hand, I do know how to bake a warm, cheesy, and mouth-watering pizza right from the freezer. That's right! It's so easy to take all the credit when preparing Tony's Pizza because you will never expect frozen pizza to taste so good!

The nice thing about frozen pizza is that you can always have one prepared eat your own convenience at home. It's like having a girlfriend, even better, since frozen pizza will be there for you 24/7 and it will give you that warm feeling you crave every now and then.Well having pizza delivered is great but let's face it, it's more expensive, the pizza guy is sometimes late, and you can't always get the extra toppings and some other stuff you want in it without having the delivery guy judging you for it.

And I've got to say, there is absolutely no difference between a frozen pizza and a delivered one. I've actually tried cooking the four cheese one from Tony's Pizza and boy oh boy it was really good! To my surprise, it actually looked like the picture on the box and it tasted as good as it looked. It doesn't take long to prepare so it's a perfect meal for those unexpected get together with friends.

Well if you did want to try Tony's Pizza for yourself, then you might want to get one right now since they have the promotion were you can go bowling for free for every purchase of Tony's Pizza. Sounds like a fun event!

Visit my sponsor: Tony's Pizza

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

An Open Letter: Dear Blog

Dear Blog,

How are you? It's been a while since I've shared anything worthwhile with you. I'm sorry, I've been pretty busy with school, work, and basically life. I have a lot of things to say to you but I just don't have time anymore to just sit and be able to think.

I hope that you're not angry at me for neglecting you for so many months now. You've been such a good friend to me. You have listened to all of my problems and worries and shared with me my moments of great happiness and sadness. I know you don't have a choice since I sort of own you but still, having you here by my side is comforting.

But come on Blog! What happened to you? Your recent comments aren't even recent and you just look like a mess. I know that it's partly my fault that you're in this state but come on! You didn't have to resort to blog suicide. I still need you blog, so please don't die on me.


Your Best Friend,

Vincent

Friday, March 12, 2010

Intellectual Rights

If you have visited my blog earlier this week or the weeks before, you would actually notice that my two blog posts about euthanasia and a comparative essay between Shooting an Elephant and A Modest Proposal has been deleted. No, no one deleted them because only I can delete them and no one requested or asked me to delete them. Well the last statement is partly true.

It so happened that those two entries were my papers for my nursing and English subjects. My teacher found them here on my blog and she told me that I should be careful about posting my papers online since someone could actually steal my ideas. Although at first I thought that having someone plagiarize my work would be awesome since it means that my paper was good enough to be copied. It then dawned on me that I might be the one charged with plagiarism and then they could keep all the credit. That would really suck.

This is the main reason why people should place patents on their products and acquire copyrights to their works. Take a look at James Cameron who is being criticized for plagiarism.For someone who took several years to create a movie and be accused of plagiarism is very hard. I don`t know the entire story behind this so I won`t comment that much.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Writing a Memoir

When I grow old I plan on writing a memoir or an autobiography. My purpose in writing an autobiography isn't for the hope of earning millions of dollars in book sales but it is my way of sharing my life experiences with the future generations of Bautistas. I want my son or daughter, my grandchildren, and the entire future lineage to know who I am and for them to learn from the many mistakes that I have done in the past and what I will do in the future.

The only problem with this plan is that my life is pretty much dull and I don't have any clue how to start writing my life story. Perhaps I could try and take up autobiography writing lessons from LifeBio.com. The great thing about LifeBio.com is that they ask more than 250 thought provoking questions in 35 categories that you can dig up old memories which you may have forgotten with the passage of time.

If you're not vain and narcissistic like me and you do not want to make an autobiography, creating an autobiography is a great way to commemorate the life of a loved one or capture memories. Sure we have pictures as one way of preserving a moment in time but having a narrative that explains who are the people in the picture and what was happening during the picture could give us a more in depth understanding of what the picture stands for. A picture may say a thousand words but it's even better if there are actual words like an autobiography.

Well LifeBio.com doesn't just offer preserving memories in autobiographies because you can capture memories and be able to share that event to the future generations by creating a digital scrapbook also.Or you may give a love one a memory journal so that they can be helped remembering past events. The possibilities are endless so have fun!