Week 5 - Pahuaja Thao

In this week’s topic of rethinking the western health services, The Devil card fits perfectly well with this theme. The card represents temptation, an addiction. It is an addiction that causes us to to view things the way we see fits. However, the devil card also states that we must reevaluate our delusions and rethink it. Kind of like how we should rethink the western health services.

In “Sick Woman” by Johanna Hedva, the term “sick woman” is not confine to just women but to anyone whose pain has gone invisible and does not have the guarantee of care. It is a term for “an identity and body that can belong to anyone denied the privileged existence”(“Sick Woman”, page 149). This term explains how patients or “sick” people are treated in the western health services. In the reading, Hedva stated how she read an article where the man’s wife had to wait for a long time when she needed medical attention immediately. Hedva also states that the western health services finds anyone sick if they seem to cross their lines. For example, “according to this society, a young black woman can’t possibly be that important - and for her to insist that she is must mean she’s sick”(“Sick Woman”, page 145). Due to a black woman getting all “emotional” over being falsely accused for being under the influence of marijuana and having her car impounded, she was involuntarily put into the hospital psych ward. She was then labeled to be “sick” and “delusional” because she stated that Obama followed her back on Twitter. As a result, the western health services make it seem as if you are sick. As if your sickness defines who you are but like Hedva stated, in Native American Cree language, it is not “I am sick” but “The sickness has come to me.”(“Sick Woman”, page 146).

In order to rethink our western health services, we must include spiritual medicine and health into our scientific one which is exactly what the article “You are here: locating ‘spirituality’ on the map of the current medical world” talks about. We must include not just medical care but spiritual care to the patients.

In the two articles "Is Wi-Fi in Schools Safe?" by Brain Spero and "Wifi in Schools" by Cindy Russell both state the danger of too much exposure to EMF can be to children. These two articles is similar to the topic discussed in Thursday class(04/27). In order to save the environment, we need to rethink the things we do to it. So in order to avoid a result we do not want in the future, we need to rethink about the amount of EMF exposure children get on a daily basis.

Question:
Considering that we have been exposed to EMF our whole life, what could be one example that is strong enough to change our daily life style?