As a nutritional science student, I have to say that I read a lot of “first-hand” medical event from my major course. Today, I will talk about my “first-hand” medical event about my grandmother. My grandmother passed away when I was 13 years old. She already had leg thrombosis when I was 7. Leg thrombosis is already took her one leg. But when I was 13, cerebrovascular took her life.
Speaking about cultural background, the public health system of township is not mature in 60s of China. People who lived in rural areas need to spend a whole day going to the central hospital in the city. This situation only depends on some serious disease. They will choose small clinics and traditional treatment for ordinary disease and they don’t have the habit of annual medical examinations. Not to mention the prevention and intervention of disease, they only care about their own economic situation.
For education experience, most of the people in rural areas do not have conditions to learn to read and write. First reason is about the threat of war, many families prefer their children to stay at home and be safe. Even if there are conditions to go to school, the family is more willing to send boys to study. And girls should stay at home to help their parents do housework. My grandmother was one of these girls. So she did have a chance to find out the important of health in the education. The understanding of health life for her is not the first thing she pay attention about. Therefore, the eating habit for her is very unhealthy. Most are meat and starch-based foods in their three meals. The intake of vegetables and fruits are seriously deficient. The overload of saturated fat in the human body increase the risk factor of heart disease, hypertension, and thrombus. It led to the cause of my grandmother’s disease for a very long time.
For the medical system, doctors and hospitals were relatively rare at the time. And it is located at urban, not rural. There are organizations to intervene and prevent disease in rural areas. However, most of them are not format, without the support of government agencies. Some people are deceived by these organizations.
My grandmother is very lucky to meet a formal hospital and took a series of diagnosis and treatment when she was sick. Even though I was a little girl in that time, but this experience gives a lot of real-world understanding when I studied anthropology and nutritional science.
Hi Qinnan,
I am sorry to hear about your grandmother passing away. It seems as though it was a very hard and confusing time for you, as you were very young and probably did not understand much about what was going on at the time. From doing the research for our activity post, it seems as though rural and urban communities often lack sufficient access to decent healthcare systems. The lack of education and threat of violence and/or accidents seems to be one of the main causes, aside from traditional gender roles that often prevent women from furthering their education.
Is nutritional science something you are interested in because of this event? Also, if this was something that had happened now, was there anything you think you could have done differently in order to assist your grandmother in receiving different types of healthcare or treatments? It sounds like she had the opportunity to go to a formal hospital to begin treatments, as you had mentioned that this is not something that is allowed for everyone. I am glad to hear that she was allowed access to those treatments and that you have comfort in knowing that the healthcare system was doing what they could for her at the time.
I’m sorry about your grandmother, that must have been really hard for you and your family to watch your grandma go through that. I do have a few questions though. Do you think your grandma’s health would have been better if she had had access to education when she was younger? And would she have been educated in biomedicine if she had attended school or would it have been a different medical system?