Personal Narrative: My Life As A Veteran

When I began working for the Veteran’s Administration as a personal care attendant for veterans that are wheelchair bound I had no idea how profoundly one veteran would affect me. This veteran, whom I will refer to as D-man, would become part of my life for 3 years. This is the first experience that I would have with a totally dependent quadriplegic. Even though I have worked as a medical assistant for many years, this was the first time that I would get to experience up close and personal, the day-in and day-out challenges facing paraplegics and quadriplegics, not only for D-man but also his mother who is his full-time caregiver. This experience of caring for him has given me a deeper insight into the contemplative urgency for an Advance Health Care Directive/Living Will in my life. From my own perspective, I can see how this tragic incapacitating event has dismantled the structure of his pre-accident family unit, forced him into a life of isolation and total dependence upon his mother, and forever forfeited any hope of socioeconomic or individual independence he may have once had. Forever gone is any chance of an even partial return to the “normal” society that …show more content…
This was also the case with Terri Schiavo and Nancy Cruzan. Both were vibrant young women in their mid twenties. Terri Schiavo suffered a heart attack, as the result of the heart attack; her brain went without oxygen for 10 minutes. She soon lapsed into ‘vegetative state’ where she would remain unchanged for over a decade. Nancy Cruzan was involved in a motor vehicle accident and her brain went without oxygen for 12-14 minutes and she too lapsed into a coma. Both women were diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state but would be kept alive artificially with feeding tubes and ventilators for a multitude of consecutive years, never to recover, encased in the legalities of not having an Advance Health Care