I think that perhaps you have been or will be studying about Quality of Life issues in some of your courses. I wanted to share a quote from an old movie I watched recently that really got me to thinking about QOL. The movie is called "Steel Magnolias" and was made in 1989. One of the characters in the movie is a young woman with diabetes and has been warned that getting pregnant is not safe for her. She, however, is a newlywed and dreams of having a child. When she finds out she is pregnant, her mother is very angry with her because she knows that the consequences of pregnancy can be devastating for her daughter. In reply to her mother's anger, the young woman cries to her mother, "I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special. "
The young woman goes ahead with the pregnancy, but goes into renal failure afterward. She gets a kidney transplant, but ultimately dies from complications. It is a very sad and thought provoking story. The young woman did get to raise her baby for about a year after his birth. She made the choice to have "30 minutes of wonderful rather than a lifetime of nothing special."
I think she would have defined a lifetime without a child as having low QOL. What do you think?
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3 comments:
I agree. I think she would have found a childless life a worthless life. It puts me in mind of my father who, though much older than this woman in Steel Magnolias, made a similar decision in 1984, which was to have a double heart bypass at the age of 73. The doctors at the time were very unwilling to do this for someone of his age, but he desperately wanted to have the operation rather than spend the rest of his life taking more and more tablets and becoming less and less active -for him that would have been a life with minimal quality. He got a second opinion and at last the doctors agreed to do the operation. It went well, but later, on the ward, he had a massive heart collapse, went into a coma and died 10 days later. At the time, it was a very difficult decision for me to accept, because I knew that if he hadn't had the operation he would have still been alive to see me graduate from university, start a career and so on. But now I realise that it was his life and his decision to make and he left this life without having to endure any mental or major physical frailities, which he would have absolutely hated. And I had 23 wonderful years with him, for which I'm very grateful. (I talk about this experience and many more in my book 'Family and More - Enemies or Friends?')
Recently, I also made a big decision, which was to leave teaching after 20 years, because I wanted to improve my QOL. I felt like I was on a merry-go-round going round and round in circles and getting nowhere, not helped by the government introducing one thoughtless initiative after another. So here I am, attempting to establish myself as a writer, something I have always wanted to do ever since I was a child.(I have by the way written a book about my teaching experiences, called 'It's a Teacher's Life...!') Each person has the right to decide what for them is high QOL and what isn't, and although you may not like it, you may not agree with it, you have to respect it.
I hope your teaching is still giving you a high QOL!
Helena Harper
www.helenaharper.com
Dear Helena,
Thank you for your comment! I admire your courage in moving on from teaching to a new career. Best of luck with your writing.
And thank you for sharing about your father. You make an excellent point. QOL decisions are very personal and it is important for us to respect each individual's right to decide for themselves.
FT
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