My Father's Illness Narrative

The fall of 2014 turned out to be the most formative season of my life, in terms of health. Drawing on the parallels between my father’s illness narrative and my grandmother’s illness narrative and the ways in which they deviate, I hope to articulate their health experiences in terms of gender discrepancies, medical pluralism, and physician expectations. In describing these accounts, I will attempt to highlight the ways in which these illnesses affected my family’s lives. In an attempt to be healthy, my dad and I resolved to consistently begin going to the gym. This decision came about as a result of my grandmother’s heart attack – heart health was an instrumental factor in this resolution. My grandmother’s heart attack resulted from a lack of exercise, the lack of a healthy diet, and the physician’s lack of confidence in my grandmother’s ailment. She had been complaining of chest pain for a

When his “acid reflux” began flaring up every time we worked out, he decided to see a physician. Since my dad mentioned chest pain while scheduling the appointment, the doctor was immediately concerned and rushed my dad in for a check-up. Upon arrival, the clinician chose to prescribe medication and informed my father that if the pain did not subside in the next few days, then he needed to return for further testing. The decision to prescribe medication reinforced Kliff’s observation that "doctors should treat a patient’s disease, but also do more to end the pain it caused,” also, it shows the doctor’s ultimate goal of reaching a pain of 0. Since the doctor was unable to pinpoint the illness, he settled for treating its’ symptoms, further escalating the overmedication crisis in America. Already, my father was treated more quickly and competently than my grandmother, even though they had presented the same