Ella Miller Final paper

Words: 3484
Pages: 14

Ella Miller’s End of Life Crisis
LaToya Dail
SOC 313 Social Implications of Medical Issues
Mark Mussman
May 19, 2015

The Life of Ella Miller Getting prepared for death can be an exhausting experience for the patient and their family. It is very important that the patient not only knows what they want as far as their right to receive or reject treatment and medications or knowing whether they want to receive palliative care at home or in a hospital setting to include the advantages and disadvantages of each. The main focus of this paper is to give the reader an in depth look on how an end of life crisis affects a patient and their family. Ella is a breast cancer patient who just came out of remission and is at the end of her life.

It includes the use of herbal and natural medicines such as opium, natural oils, an mineral supplements to name a few. Ella grew up on a farm and does not trust conventional methods for treating her of breast cancer. No one can really blame her there are so many side effects to medicine now a days who knows if they are actually better or worse? Not only that, alternative medicines seem to be a lot less expensive than traditional or conventional medicines; they seem to be more swift, more effective, have no side affects, are readily available and are natural. There are a few disadvantages such as they don’t work for all kinds of disease, there are food restrictions but most people that use them are already on a healthy diet anyway, and they are symtomatic.
Some other problems that may occur from Ella’s continual use of alternative medicines is that her family may not think that this is the best option for her. They may try to convence her to take traditional methods because she is weak and it will probably ease her pain. If they coerece her into taking mainstream medical advice it can cause her to be more depressed, weak, and feeling a loss of family support. This is not healthy for her. Ella’s husband can not except the fact that he is her husband and thinks that Ella should adhere to his family traditions. “Values can exert powerful influences on behavior and beliefs about what constitutes appropriate, positive, prosocial behavior in others.”