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Lulu Wang tells us a story about her grandmother being diagnosed with lung cancer. Instead of the family telling her they built a lie to protect her because they thought knowing about the sickness would have led to fear and depression which would have eventually led to her killing herself. Was it the right thing for the family to keep this secret from her though? In China doctors don’t tend to give the patient news instead they tell the family and what Lulu’s family found out was that her grandmother only had 3 months to live. Honestly keeping it a secret wasn’t the worst thing you could have done, but building the lie to be as big as it was took it completely over the top. First the family made a fake medical report saying that Lulu’s grandmother was fine and then planned a fake wedding which was really a goodbye party for her grandmother and the hardest part was that they had to show nothing but happiness there. Keeping a secret from someone especially this dangerous could really hurt someone if they find out and you don’t tell them. Even though this whole time Lulu’s grandmother had breast cancer and kept it a secret from everybody. So who was really wrong here? The whole family kept one lie and Lulu’s grandmother kept another.
About three years ago I still remember the day that I saw my grandfather in the hospital for the last time. The conversations, who was there, and what happened has been burned into my memory. He had a tumor that started in his eye and spread throughout his body over the course of a year. One day he was perfectly fine and then he woke up the next morning seeing double vision and was completely confused with what was happening. Eventually he was barely able to use his arms and soon he couldn’t even walk on his own anymore. Coming in and out of the hospital about once to twice a month was not only hard on him but also my grandmother who took care of him from day one. My parents, Uncle, Aunt, Grandmother, and I sat in a private room for the last time waiting for the doctor to give us news saying he wasn’t going to make it. We had options to either let him go slowly or keep him unconscious while they put a tube into his stomach feeding him but that only would have made him last an extra week at most. So we As he was in the ICU we came up to him telling him that it was time and what we were going to do. He couldn’t respond with words but he was able to hear us and i felt him squeeze my hand as we were telling him. It had to be the hardest day of my life letting someone that has been in my life since day one go and telling him the bad news made things even harder for me to accept.
2 Comments
Sophia Mele
9/12/2017 07:10:52 am
Hey Raffi! As I was reading your blog post I was thinking the same thing about how extra they made the secret out to be. First the fake doctors note, then the fake good-bye party. It seems a little over the top. But the reason we don't understand too well is because this is not our culture and it is not how we are brought up. We learn that defeat is a trigger to conquer whatever is in our way, to defeat the failure in front of us. Culture and family correlate a lot when it comes to sickness and the reason the doctor gave the mother the news was because he probably knew that she would make the best decision with it. Plus who are we to interfere with how a family feels?
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Lisa Harrison
9/18/2017 08:31:58 pm
I feel for you since I have been through it with my aunt and grandmother. I feel sometimes the hardest thing is by telling the truth and accepting what the terms are. In life we want to be selfish so we don't feel the pain and sadness, by doing that it hurts us more. I am sorry you age to experience that with your grandfather in a short amount of time.
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