For some clients who have issues with their bowels, an ostomy diversion is needed. An ostomy diversion is a procedure where a part of the intestines is brought up through the abdomen to create a new exit for stool, or a stoma. The stoma is then covered with an ostomy bag to catch the stool that comes out of the stoma. For this assignment, I was challenged to wear an ostomy appliance for 48 hours. Though I was nervous about wearing the bag for that long I knew it would help me relate a little easier to clients with ostomy bags. Before this assignment, I perceived care for an ostomy bag to be about cleanliness, diet, and self-image.
My self-image was the first thing I had trouble with. Though I knew it wasn’t real, seeing the bag on my abdomen made me instantly want to cover it up. This assignment was done in the lab, so my scrubs easily covered the bag until I got home. The next morning took much longer than usual to get ready for the day. I never realized how many of my pants were high-waisted, so this left me with few options to wear something that wouldn’t crush the ostomy bag. The clothes I chose were loose so that the bag wasn’t being crushed or could be seen through my clothes.
Not only was self-image tough, but physically having the ostomy bag there was tough as well. Constantly feeling the bag on my abdomen was an uncomfortable feeling. A few times I even almost reached to rip it off without realizing it because I forgot it was there. The feeling of having something constantly stuck to your side took a few hours to get used to. Although, I feel like I never fully got used to it.
Taking the ostomy bag off was also a small challenge. The bag was stuck on very well to my skin and I had a tough time taking it off. I tried to go slowly at first, but it felt like I was individually ripping out each hair on my abdomen. I took a deep breath and ripped the rest off in one go. I had to pull pretty hard to get it off all at once.
Before this assignment, I felt like I had a good idea of what clients with ostomy bags go through. After this assignment, I realize that it is a lot harder than it looks. When I think about the tough time I had, I have to stop and remember that people have to live with this every day. Some for the rest of their lives. Wearing an ostomy bag for 48 hours has given me the client’s perspective rather than the nurses. I believe that putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is sometimes the best way to learn.
During the second mental health simulation, I already felt more confident in myself than last time since I knew a little of what to expect. During the first round of simulation, I had a panic attack during the first patient interaction and had to leave the room for a few minutes in order to calm down. I was so nervous the first time that I got into my head and was overthinking every little interaction with the patient which led to my panic attack. The second time around, I felt calm and collected and ready to interact with all the patients. I felt that during the second simulation it was easier for me to talk to the patients, and I felt that I had a better flow with my questions.
This simulation experience has taught me an abundance about therapeutic communication and how to talk to patients with specific disease processes and understand their points of view better. I always knew that mental health had a lot to do with therapeutic communication, so it was very helpful to learn that some of the things that I was saying were not therapeutic, even if I originally perceived it to be. An example of this is saying “don’t worry” to a patient. Though this may seem therapeutic to say, it actually can make the patient feel dismissed and that the nurse isn’t really listening to them.
The group that I was with for this round of simulation ran into one challenge. Our challenge was our group trying to fix our patient’s problems, rather than just listening to them, and offering therapeutic communication. When we talked about this in the debrief, we went over how patients can get frustrated or feel not heard when you keep giving them solutions. More often, patients need someone to listen to their concerns without judgment and validate their feelings. This mental health simulation is an experience that I will keep with me anywhere I go in my nursing career.
My second paper had some ups and downs In the writing process and in the finished product. For my writing process, I like to make an outline and plan what each paragraph is going to be about. To me, having that plan makes it easier to write more effectively and have a good flow to my writing. In the first draft of this paper, there were no Barclays or naysayer paragraph. This unfortunately was the same for my final draft. The easiest thing to edit in my paper was expanding on the ideas I already had and coming up with new ones. The subject of this paper was interesting to me and therefore made it easy to want to expand. The feedback I gained from my peers helped me come up with new ideas for my paper and helped me see things from another perspective. Editing other peoples papers also gave me ideas and helped me come up with new arguments. Doing peer editing was the best thing for improving my paper.
Learning Outcome 2:
The evidence in my paper was carefully picked out to help get across each point I was making. One specific example in my paper is when I used a quote to show that scientists working on gene editing still tried to follow a set of ethics. “He adds that, “he has permission from a local review board to do his research, but that this does not allow transfer of gene-edited eggs into the womb and subsequent pregnancy” (Cryanoski).” This quote was chosen because of how it related to the main idea of the paragraph.
At the start of the semester, I was hesitant about using so many quotes in a paper because I didn’t have enough experience with it. I thought that finding the right quote was hard and didn’t help my writing. After this semester, I am much more confident in my ability to find good evidence for my papers. I now also see how quotes support a paper and how it can help you expand on your ideas. I now prefer to use quotes in all my papers, not just for English, to make a stronger paper with lots of evidence to support any claim I make.
Learning Outcome 3:
When I come to a reading, I do not usually do any prior planning, I just jump headfirst into it. I like to highlight lots of things when I am reading something important. Anything that stands out or seems interesting to me gets highlighted. I do not usually write things in the margins of the paragraph because I find myself not knowing what to write most of the time. But if there is a word, I’m not familiar with I always look it up and write what it means in the margin. I also highlight anything that I think could be used for a future quote in my writing.
The two papers you gave us, Categories for Active, Critical response and 7 Active Reading Strategies for Students, gave some good techniques for active and critical reading. One of the things on the handouts said to keep track of the things you do and do not understand. This is a good way for me to better understand difficult readings. Lots of times I must end up reading a section of a difficult reading repeatedly to be able to understand it. This was advice I also obtained from one of your handouts. These tools of annotation can help me in many other subjects rather than just English. It will help me better actively read for all my classes and help me pick out the important information I need. Learning how to better annotate has a great benefit for the rest of a person college career ad even beyond that.
Learning Outcome 4:
Peer review is something that was very helpful throughout the semester. At the beginning of the semester I was a little bit hesitant on giving a peer review because I did not want to hurt people’s feelings. But now I know that peer reviewing is just meant to help better everyone’s writing. Global revision was a little but new for me because in high school my teachers were more concerned about the local revision. At first, coming up with global revisions seems a bit difficult but by the second paper, I was able to easily pick things out that could be edited. The class designed Peer Review Glossary was a big help in being able to find things to edit and to word them in a constructive way. My efforts in peer reviewing got stronger throughout the semester. Seeing how my classmates peer reviewed my own papers also helped me better understand the most effective way to peer review.
Learning Outcomes 5 and 6:
My ability to cite sources on my paper grew stronger throughout the semester. Usually on the first draft I am not too concerned with getting my citations correct as I am with the quality of the paper overall. In the first drafts of my papers I often miss I citation completely of I mark that I need put one in a certain place later. In my final paper, I always make sure to carefully look over all my citations to make sure they are all present and done correctly. For my local revisions I used the spellcheck that automatically comes with word and I also used Grammarly. Grammarly is a really good tool to use for local edits and helped catch things in my paper that I would not have myself. The handouts from Professor Spain about how to correctly cite things in text and for the work cited page was also a very big help.
1. Things like ending climate change and the fight for pro choice with abortion are just two things that I would be an activist for. Emotions like fear and anger are big factors in protest and activism.
2. Activism and protesting can sometimes force the media to look at what’s happening and give the protest more attention. This attention will attract people to the protest and stop things like the keystone pipeline. Because of protest, the President Obama rejected the approval to build the keystone pipeline.
3. false
4. true
5. In this quote, Schor means that the economy cant rise when there are so many limits.
6. The carbon footprint is mentioned briefly towards the beginning of the video. I have also seen talk about the carbon footprint on social media. I am not sure how to calculate my own carbon footprint.
7. Agree
8. Disagree
9. Yes this scares me
10. I believe that it is cool to be an activist. Activism towards the stop of climate change has become more of a global concern.
11. The number 350 is the limit of how much carbon can be in the air.
Gene editing is something that could completely change the game of medicine and disease treatment. With the crispr technology there is a possibility that one day people will be able to eliminate harmful genetic diseases before a child is born. Though this can seem like an easy concept, there are lots of ethical things that tie into gene editing. The people need to ask themselves if gene editing is even ethical at all. For this to happen, the people need to have all the information that scientists have on gene editing to make a clear and thought out decision. Taking the time to think about ethical problems with gene editing can make a faster break for solutions to the problems. Gene editing is something that could save many people’s lives and possibly eliminate certain genetic diseases from the gene pool. In dealing with health, many readers would argue that others could get their hands on medical records and could jeopardize peoples opportunities in getting jobs and healthcare. Though this is a concern, the HIPPA laws will protect patients and keep their medical records private.
In China, a scientist named Jianku He edited the embryos of twin girls to make them HIV resistant. They were born in October of 2018 for the mother named Jen Duodna. Since their birth they have been healthy baby girls. Many people worry about the pricing of crispr technology and the possible discrimination that could come with it. In a short documentary about the crispr technology it states that it is cheap technology for scientists to use. The cheapness of crispr can make the option more open to people that are in lower classes. Gene editing can also expand to people that chose not to edit their genes. Say, for example, a couple decides to have a baby together. One of the spouses had their genes edited but the other didn’t. This still gives the baby an opportunity to receive the genes from the parent that went through gene editing. The more people gene edit for genetic diseases, the less it will be needed down the road because certain diseases will eventually be mostly eliminated.
In The Dalai Lama, new genetics have more to do with ethics than with science. The amount of technological possibilities rising makes it difficult for ethical thinking to keep up the pace. Many people in medicine believe that the human genome will bring about a new time. What we do with the amount of knowledge we can hold must be handled in a compassionate way. The education system should teach about the empirical facts of science along with the ethical questions. People must be willing take a stand when science crosses the a line. Ethical responses should involve some key factors. These key factors are to check our motivation, relate to the problem, apply our reason, and respond in a spirit of humility.
“A profound aspect of the problem, it seems to me, lies in the question of what to do with our new knowledge.” (Lama 64)
“We cannot imagine how such practices could affect our very concept of what it is to be human.” (Lama 67)
“…we need to examine all areas of human existence where genetic technology may have lasting implications.” (Lama 70)
“We must be willing to be revolted when sciences- or for that matter any human activity- crosses the line of human decency, and we must fight to retain the sensitivity that is otherwise so easily eroded.” (Lama 69)
The ethical side of the new genetics must be handled with caution and take all sides and solutions into consideration.
1. I did fix and improve some things in my final draft. All of the citations were fixed and I tried to connect Yoshio’s idea back to my thesis. I had a little bit of a hard time trying to include connecting Yoshino back to the thesis, so, I think that still might be a weakness of the paper.
2. I think the peer review was helpful in improving my paper. The people of my group gave good and constructive feedback.
According to Yoshino, the true self is who you truly are. The false self balances and protects the personality. There is no shame in using the false self. “Because the relationship between the True Self and the False Self is so symbiotic, Winnicott believes both selves will exist even in the healthy individual.” The false self can be used as a barrier to hide yourself when the true self is threatened. People who aren’t ready to be their true selves also hide behind the false self. Even after people come out to their true selves, the false self could still stick around to regulate yourself in the real world.
Freedom as a concept is more important than the individual freedoms of a particular group. Equality claims is something that the court tries to steer clear from. This is because equality claims involves the court picking favorites among a group. The court would much rather focus on the liberty claims because it emphasizes what we have in common.
Bringing light to our shame and suffering can reduce its power. In Hallward’s ted talk, she endorses that talking about our shame and suffering can reduce its power and be a force of social change. She claims that, “I think that telling out vulnerable silence stories is like a form of nonviolent social change and it can be unstoppable.” If we go towards our shame and suffering, it could benefit both you and the people around you.
Radio is more effective in helping people share their silenced stories. When people are on the radio, you cant see their faces, you can only hear their voice. Since the guest on the radio isn’t seen, it can make them feel more comfortable with telling their stories to anyone listening. Hallward observes that, “But the listener is usually alone, people listen to radio when their driving or working or cooking or cleaning. Its a very private and therefore intimate medium.” The listener being alone could make them more likely to listen and be more comfortable to listen. Doing this radio show can also help people go towards the first step in coping with the shame they carry.
