Category: McCoy 101 Fall 2019

Being present in the moment is becoming increasing harder these days with the rise of technology drawing us away from reality and into our phones. It provides an easy and entertaining excuse to ignore what’s happening around us. I’m nowhere near innocent of this and it truly hit me during my English 101 class. We were discussing the location an African burial site that was uncovered and transformed into a beautiful memorial in New York City. The google maps of the location was pulled up on every laptop during class time and that’s when I noticed. I had passed by the location numerous times on my trips to New York City and neglected to appreciate its beauty. I decided not to speak up about this realization in class because quite frankly I was embarrassed. The discussion revolved around the horrific neglect and disrespect that the bodies endured and although I agreed with the many claims that they deserved better, I neglected to do so myself. I once again was a hypocrite without even realizing it, and it immediately got me thinking about the course epigraph quote from Dionne Brand that Professor Beth McCoy’s notes highlight, “My job is to notice… and to notice that you can notice.” So as every good hypocrite does I will try to explain myself in an attempt to feel less guilty about my actions.

Just as I myself had done, this burial site was ignored for far too long and its history is discussed in Alondra Nelson’s, The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome. “In 1991, archeologists uncovered several graves on a plot in lower Manhattan.” This discovery is extremely recent only being 28 years ago considering some bodies dated back to the 1600’s Nelson highlights. What is most shocking about the supposed discovery of the bodies is that the government already knew they were there as Nelson details, “While both government officials and the New Jersey-based archeological salvage company Historic Conservation and Interpretation the company conducting the land survey were aware of the presence of the graveyard, the uncovering of hundreds of intact burials at the site was nevertheless surprising because archeologists hypothesized that most remains would have been destroyed long ago.” This initially gave me peace because something as large as the government didn’t even take the time to notice the burial ground. This peace quickly turned to unsettlement that after all these years they had done nothing about the grave site. I began to question whether there were more sites like this one. Maybe ones that have also not received my attention. What else have I neglected to notice? 

What I’ve learned throughout this semester is a lack of notice is a lack of willingness to appreciate and understand. Both of which are really important in connecting with others, which happens frequently throughout class time in my English 101 class, as well as with the text which can reveal some really important lessons when considered thoughtfully. While watching a video in class of the African Burial Ground National Monument, I was able to give the site my full attention and saw many things that got me thinkING. The caskets were slightly risen above the ground causing a large bump to stick out covered in grass which I had never seen before. I found this particularly interesting because it sent chills up my spine when I saw it. Whether intentionally done or not, physically seeing them poking out of the ground helped me to immediately connect that a person was buried there as opposed to seeing a gravestone, which I’m used to seeing in my burial practices, and to which I’ve become desensitized to as a coping mechanism. After the bodies were ignored for so long, being risen above the ground made sure they wouldn’t be overlooked. The indoor museum piece of the monument spoke to me as well. This gave a sense of voice to the dead who no longer had one but wanted to share their story. It highlighted the oppression faced by the people buried at the site and helped tell a story silenced and covered up so long ago. 

Noticing this monument the second time around is representative of my experience in English 101 giving me a second chance to really notice medicine in its entirety. It taught me that it’s okay to have made mistakes while noticing in the past as long as they can be admitted to and change is initiated. So I encourage all to take a second look. Notice anything new?

Teeth are the weapons of the dead. Colson Whitehead, in Zone One, creates a world where teeth are the single most feared object. Incisors, canines, and molars are weapons capable of killing a person and also infecting people to become another member of the vast zombie army. The seriousness and danger of teeth can be felt by Whitehead’s comparison to guns, “a gun to his temple or teeth to his jugular.” Teeth are to be feared as a tool that functions as a weapon against the living. In the apocalyptic world, teeth hold an obvious and significant role in society. Whitehead explains the primary objective of survivors living in Zone One, the “first priority was keeping their limbs and associated parts attached to their bodies free of teeth.” The importance of teeth in this society is established very early on in the novel.

However, Whitehead also subtly indicates that teeth are not only a functional tool but may have additional significance. After discussing the importance of dental health and reading Jack McKeown’s blog post, I realized that teeth are seen as a proficient indicator of socioeconomic status. Whitehead questions the role of teeth in society through Mark Spitz wondering, “Did it work the hairdo, the bleached teeth, the calculated injections, did it transform the country rube into the cosmopolitan?” Society places substantial weight on the condition and appearance of teeth. Unfortunately in most cases, the quality of teeth is dependent on a person’s socioeconomic status and access to dental care. Teeth are another aspect of society that qualify people based upon socially constructed principles rather than substantive content.

White, straight teeth are a trait that many people admire and wish to obtain. Teeth are a variable trait of all human beings and are commonly altered for physical appearance reasons alone. According to a survey conducted by the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry, 86% percent of dental patients indicated that a major reason  for receiving treatment was to “improve physical attractiveness and self-esteem.” Less than half (46%) of the respondents listed “for restorative or oral health reasons” as a major reason for seeking dental treatment. Those with financial access to dental procedures see the industry as a tool to improve their overall appearance in accordance with societal values placed on white and straight teeth. While many individuals seek treatment for cosmetic reasons there are patients who require treatment in order to improve their oral health.

According to the FDI World Dental Federation, oral disease affects 3.9 billion people worldwide and untreated tooth decay occurs in nearly half of the world’s population. They also report that 110 billion dollars are spent annually treating oral conditions, and worldwide more is spent on oral healthcare than in the treatment of cancer or respiratory diseases. The FDI also claims that oral disease can be extremely damaging when untreated, “ Oral disease is associated with significant pain and anxiety, as well as disfigurement, acute and chronic infections, eating and sleep disruption, and can result in an impaired quality of life.” The treatment of oral conditions is an extremely expensive endeavor and there are many Americans that lack the financial means to receive necessary treatment.

The Washington Post Article, authored by Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan, titled “The Painful Truth About Teeth”, brings light to the separation in dental care due to socioeconomic status. Jordan and Sullivan report that more than a third of American adults have no dental coverage. Although there are proven detrimental overall health implications that come with oral disease, Medicare, “which covers 55 million seniors and disabled people, does not cover dental problems.” Many of these people cannot afford supplemental dental insurances and are forced to go without. Jordan and Sullivan also explain that “if you are poor enough and live in certain states you can get coverage through Medicaid.” However, only 38% of dentists accept Medicaid and it only covers an average of 37% of the bill, leaving even those with additional government aid unable to receive imperative dental treatment. American people are desperate for affordable medical care. The article also describes a free medical clinic in Maryland where 1,165 patients waited to receive dental treatment of serious oral conditions. Many lower-class Americans are not receiving the support that they require in order to receive necessary treatment while many Americans use insurance to help pay for cosmetic treatments.  

There is a serious separation in dental treatment, between socioeconomic classes, that needs to be addressed. I believe that Colson Whitehead is very creative by placing a heavy reliance on teeth in Zone One and hinting at the disparity in dental coverage. Zone One is a novel that tears down societal constructs and coerces readers to question what is truly important. Whitehead describes the teeth of skels as “black”, “rotten” and “broken” and hints at the idealized appearance through the American Phoenix mascot as “square and white.” When the skels finally overrun Zone One and prevail over a camp of the American Phoneix, black teeth overcome white teeth. I believe that Whitehead is providing the commentary that the superior white teeth provide no actual benefit and are simply a social construct. He forces the readers to question whether or not society should be using dental care as a socioeconomic indicator rather than necessary universal medical treatment.

What is society? Merriam Webster defines society as “a community, nation or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities or interests.” In other words, society is made up of people and the culture that they establish. Culture is made up of everything that people create whether it is art, music, entertainment, fashion, and many more aspects that make up the daily lives of people. Society and culture are social constructs that are developed by people to enhance the everyday lives of people. These are things that seem important and concrete to members of society. Colson Whitehead, in Zone One, describes what happens when society falls apart.

The Last Night marks the end of the civilized non-zombie society when the plague is released and tears throughout the world. Whitehead constantly refers to the pre-zombie society with a sense of fragility. In retelling the memories of Mark Spitz on The Last Night, Whitehead describes Mark’s family home and behaviors of his parents as mundane and material. The parents were normally focused on “every room, every reconsidered and gussied square foot, was an encroachment into immortality’s lot line.” Like the rest of society, Mark Spitz and his parents were consumed by culture and felt safe and secure in the societal roles. They placed value on material things that society valued. However, the “twin leather recliners equipped with beverage holders”, carried no value after Mark Spitz walked in on his mother chewing on the intestines of his father. Society had fallen.

Throughout the entire story of Mark Spitz finding his way in this new world, Whitehead consistently reminds us of how the old society has died and a new society has taken its place. The American Phoenix is the name given to the post-infection society. The phoenix is used to symbolize the attempt to reboot society and restore it to its former glory. The government in Buffalo hopes for a return to the past and does not consider the changing circumstances of the world. Human nature is resistant to change as Whitehead explains that the “tendency of the human mind, in periods of duress, to seek refuge in more peaceful times, such as a childhood experience, as a barricade against horror.” People hold on to what they know, even when the entire world has changed around them. The people of Zone One try to find hope that eventually society will return to what it once as even though that is an impossibility. Society cannot return to what it once was it needs to change and adapt to current situations.

I could not help but connect the social constructs of society to the idea of race. Returning to Geraldine Heng’s definition of race in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, “ that race is a structural relationship for the articulation and management of human differences, rather than a substantive content.” Race, like society, is a social construct put in place by people of social influence. Racism is a purely social idea that is used as an attempt to explain obvious human differences and is not based on concrete evidence. The collapse of society in Zone One is analogous to the abolishment of slavery. Both are monumental changes in society, the plague in Zone One had a negative impact while the end of slavery had a positive impact. In both cases, due to the nature of human beings, there were people who held on to the old ideals of the outdated society. As Whitehead points out, if the change in society causes duress, humans return to ideals of past times. This may be a reason that racism remains present in our society today.

 Persons of power during the time of slavery became accustomed to the organization of races.  Even with changing circumstances in the world, there are people resistant to change, which makes racism difficult to truly eradicate. There were many people that belonged to a society that racial distinctions were an accepted part of society. Even after the major societal change many of these individuals held on to the previously accepted ideas. Unfortunately, the racist beliefs were passed down to children and to subsequent generations. The human nature to hold on to past beliefs after times of change is a major reason that I believe racism remains in existence today. Racism is an intangible idea that will remain in the world until individuals who perpetuate the ideas are able to recognize the fact that it is no longer a sanctioned aspect of society. I believe Whitehead is trying to convey the idea that people need to fight against societal ideals of the past, and that the world changes and we need to change with it.  

Many people are often named after people in their family who their parents hold very special. My name is Ariana, a completely random name that my mom just happened to like. My middle name is Rose, a basic middle name. My mom chose my middle name because it was her Grandmothers, my Great Grandmother, middle name: Vincenza Rose. Naturally, when I found this out I wanted to know more. I wanted to know all about this woman who I was named after, and why my mother chose her to name me after. 

Fortunately for me, my Great Grandmother is still alive so I was able to meet her and get to know her growing up. I was able to learn about her childhood and I learned that I am a lot like her. My Great Grandmother came over to America from Italy when she was a teenager, she made this trip all by herself. She left her family, friends, and life back in Italy so come to America and build herself a better life. My mom compares me to her because of my strong will and drive to build myself a better life. To me, it is an honor to share a middle name with a woman as strong as my Great Grandmother. 

We can see a story that is similar to mine, and a desire similar to mine to find out who you were named after in the book Zone One. Mark Spitz, the character in Zone One is sent from Buffalo with characters Kaitlyn and Garry to Manhattan to get rid of the skels and stragglers. Once everyone else is infected, Mark is left to fight the zombies on his own. While he is fighting the zombies he gets swallowed in the groud of them. Just like his namesake Mark Spitz the Olympian, Mark Spitz at the end of his career he is swallowed in a crowd of zombies (people). He is the last member of the society to be infected by the zombies. Mark Spitz was an awfully average guy from the start. He never overachieved but he also never slacked off, he was just average. Mark Spitz is not his real name however, it is a nickname given to him. The irony behind this, as Gary points out is that Mark Spitz is black. This may not seem important at first, but Gary goes on with the racial stereotype that “back people can not swim” (287). The other ironic idea behind this is just how average Mark Spitz the character is compared to the man he got his nickname after. Mark Spitz the Olympian. 

Olympian Mark Spitz was a competitive swimmer and he won 7 Olympic gold medals at the 1972 summer Olympics (Wikipedia, Mark Spitz). In class, we watched a video of Mark Spitz in the summer of 1972 Olympics where the camera continues to pan from him swimming, to the large crowd of people cheering him on. This is a particularly important video to see and understand because of the way that Zone One ends. 

Once everyone else is infected, Mark is left to fight the zombies on his own. While he is fighting the zombies he gets “jumps”  in the crowd of them. Just like his namesake Mark Spitz the Olympian, Mark Spitz at the end of his career he is swallowed in a crowd. 

Just like I am like my Great Grandmother in various ways, the character Mark Spitz is ironically the complete opposite of the real Mark Spitz and yet their careers ended the same way. 

Are you like your namesake, or are you the polar opposite of them?

There has been a long running stigma around dentistry that has prevented those in need from having access to care. I’m aware that this is a heavily discussed topic in the dental community as I am finishing up my undergrad and preparing to enter it. 

The experiences I had working in an oral surgeon’s office as a surgical assistant were the most amazing I have ever had, yet also put many things into perspective for me. Growing up in Massapequa is similar to, well, living in a bubble. Except no one in this bubble has any financial problems or social struggles for the most part. The school parking lot consisted of the finest jeeps, range rovers, and audi’s. Massapequa had many luxuries that I took for granted everyday, but the oral surgeon’s office takes patients from all over Long Island. I learned that everyone has pain whether they can afford it or not. During my time working in the office, there were many patients walking in hoping for a discount and pleading for someone to relieve their pain. In one instance the surgeon walked into the exam room to prepare for an extraction by locally numbing the area so the patient wouldn’t feel a thing. It’s worth noting that the surgeons did not charge for this part of the procedure. Then after a few minutes when the doctor walked out, the patient stood up, grabbed the forceps, and pulled out his own tooth to avoid the $700 bill I had prepared for him in his chart. People are having trouble getting the care they need and have to resort to these types of solutions to help themselves. If that isn’t proof enough that dentistry is necessary and not just cosmetic I don’t know what else is. Unfortunately these situations are all too common.

 Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan’s article titled “The Painful Truth About Teeth” is just as it sounds. Teeth can be painful yet many struggle to get treatment. The article discusses the experience of a patient named Dee Matello. She waited at a pro bono clinic in an underserved area for 10 hours before being told she needed to leave and come back the next day, “You have to be kidding!” yelled a frustrated woman behind Matello. “I have to do this all over again? Matello’s eyes filled with tears. She had been waiting 10 hours. A volunteer gave her a wristband that would put her at the head of the line the next day. So she drove home in her 18-year-old Jeep, ate dinner chewing only on the right side yet again, and set her alarm.” Not being able to see a dentist when needed is not only physically painful but emotionally taxing as well. This is sadly another example of the government prioritizing other forms of medicine over dentistry leaving people without insurance to fend for themselves. The reality is that this is not a purely cosmetic profession and watching this for myself for three months made their struggles real for me. Disconnecting the stigma associated with dentistry is imperative to the people who need it most.  

This lack of access is similar to that seen in Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid where participants in a study weren’t given the treatment they needed to stay alive because the researchers valued their data collection more than their lives. Washington investigated, “In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service inaugurated its Study of the Syphilis in the Untreated Negro Male(“tuskegee Syphilis Study”), which promised free medical care to about six hundred sick, desperately poor sharecroppers in Mason County, Alabama.” What Jordan and Sullivan’s article lacks is this side of pro-bono work. Washington continues to explain that the study was designed to observe the disease in Black men as they believed that it progressed differently for them. To accomplish this the scientists, “decided to document this by finding a pool of infected Black men, withholding treatment from them, and then charting the progression of symptoms and disorders.” There is a whole other obstacle that Medical Apartheid has helped me to realize that is not being recognized by the dental community as a problem worth addressing. How can people even trust these kind acts of free dental care and how can the medical profession prove themselves as allies after such a dark history? This was something that the office could never teach me. Mostly due to the fact that the people who know of this history and are of it repeating are clearly not going to walk into an office. This is the extremely important side of lack of access that involves years of oppression and having to build a trust with patients that are rightly scared of the doctor. 

This knowledge, in my opinion should be shared throughout the dental community in an effort to not only confront the government about their part in providing more opportunity to care, but also the dental community’s part in being knowledgeable about the history of the medical profession. If this responsibility of making patients feel safe is not acted upon this leaves a hurdle that government reforms won’t be able to fix.

I would like to re-introduce you to what has been discussed in class as an ENGL-101 life preserver: consent. Consent is a huge part of what this course is about, and I have found that there are more situations where consent is important than the short list of what I initially thought.

Consent is a huge topic in Clay’s Ark, as previously discussed in our group blog post; however, the topic of consent doesn’t just stop there. The plot of Clay’s Ark revolves around the idea of an organism taking control of a host. This organism compels the host to infect others with the disease by whatever means necessary: “[Eli] was not an animal, not a rapist, not a murderer. Yet he knew that if he let himself be drawn to the woman, he would rape her. If he raped her, if he touched her at all, she might die” (Butler, 469).

Continue reading “Deadly Diseases and Consent”

Unfortunately, throughout history the mistreatment of human bodies after they have died appears many times. This mistreatment of course depends on how the person discarding the body views its life even if they weren’t apart of it. This theme runs rampant in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. The main character Mark Spitz, and the rest of the group almost seem to discard bodies as if it were an instinct. Outside of fiction, finding discarded bodies is a reality in our society today which is unpacked in Nina Golgowski’s article titled “Up to 7,000 Bodies Found Buried Beneath University of Mississippi Medical Center.”

Throughout Whitehead’s Zone one the killing of infected people and the disposal of their bodies is constant. I found myself detaching the humanity from the victims with the disease in an attempt to get through the book and avoid the emotions associated with all of the death. This is exactly what the characters in the book are experiencing as well so they can get through Zone One and finish their assigned task. Whitehead trapped me in the exact thing I resented the characters for, and I had to self-reflect on the innate human mechanisms that I share as well. “Gary gripped the fortune-teller’s hand again. Don’t you want to know when you meet Mr. Right?” Gary is pretending to be the fortune-teller and not only mocks her previous profession, but touches her body without valid reason or consent, just for the simple fact that he can because she’s dead. He puts on a show for everyone in the room but then, “He lifted his fingers from the fortune-teller’s hand and in the instant he broke contact she grabbed his hand and chomped deep into the meat between the index finger and the thumb.”  After infection the person dies but is then brought back to life in a zombie -like state. I think Whitehead was cleverly trying to show that if dead people could come back to life, like in the book, and their bodies were being mistreated, they would do something about it as this fortune-teller did when she bit Gary. Whitehead challenges the assumption that once someone is dead that their body can be used without consent or care. 

Nina Golgowski highlights the more present reality that’s being uncovered at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Unlike the comfort provided in being able to detach from Zone One as it’s a fictional novel, what Golgowski writes about is as real as it gets. The medical center used to be the site of the Mississippi State Lunatic Asylum that left behind a mass grave site of its patients. Many loved ones of the patients still wonder why they were never informed when the patients died, “Those people buried in the asylum’s cemetery likely had relatives who couldn’t come and claim them or weren’t notified of their deaths in time, she said. People consistently want to know; can you find my ancestors in the records? she said. Overall, it’s just tremendous sadness and curiosity.” The facility clearly believed that its patients weren’t worth the effort of tracking down loved ones after their passing. Just as Mark Spitz from Whitehead’s Zone One believed that the sick people were no longer human, so did the Asylum. Creating a mass grave site was easier than dealing with families and asking for consent. An especially touching case was highlighted by Golgowski, “Clark discovered that one patient was her great-great-great grandfather, Isham Earnest, who fought in the War of 1812, a conflict between the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Earnest is believed to have died at the facility some time between 1857 and 1859. It followed Earnest being ruled insane.” One can assume that Earnest probably had post-traumatic stress disorder from his time spent fighting in the war yet although he risked his life for his country, he was labeled insane and was discarded with the thousands of other patients. How could a brave man who deserved peace and care be discarded so senselessly? It’s a human responsibility to treat others as if they were your own family member because if it were you would want them to be treated with respect. A fundamental lesson many learn in kindergarten yet seem to struggle with in adulthood?  

Consent has always been a large topic of debate. Some people have never fully grasped what consent actually means in the medical field. Just recently there was a news report about a doctor in Virginia who struggled with consent.

Consent means that you are giving permission for something to happen to you or an agreement to do something. Informed consent is also important because people need to know exactly what is happening to them, why something needs to change, and how it will change. Informed consent is the most important thing a person can give because then they know exactly what is happening to them.

Javaid Perwaiz, a 69 year old doctor in Chesapeake, Virginia, was performing surgeries on woman that they did not want, without their knowledge or consent. He was performing hysterectomies and tying their fallopian tubes without these women’s consent. “In one case, Perwaiz, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Chesapeake, told a woman she needed a hysterectomy after discovering the “imminent onset” of cancer, the documents said. The patient objected and asked instead for a less invasive operation, in which only her ovaries were removed, the court papers said When the woman awoke from surgery, “she was shocked to discover Perwaiz performed a total abdominal hysterectomy.” The doctor cut the patient’s bladder in the process, causing sepsis and requiring a six-day hospital stay, investigators claimed.” Perwaiz was performing harmful surgeries on these women without having their explicit consent.

Consent is an issue here because these women are undergoing invasive procedures that can affect the rest of their lives, without even knowing. They wanted procedures that were not as invasive, that is what they agreed to. But, their doctor decided he wanted to do a different procedure, and then not even put it on their medical records. “When the woman later obtained her medical records, the surgery was described as “elective” and cancer was not mentioned, they said.” The doctor that these women trusted to take care of them lied to them and did things without their consent.

These women had to deal with an unfortunate event that has been going on in the medical field for hundreds of years. Consent in the medical field has been an ongoing issue for many minority groups. As Washington states in her book, Medical Apartheid “Physicians’ memoirs, medical journals, and planters’ records all reveal that enslaved black Americans bore the worst abuses of these crudely empirical practices which countenanced a hazardous degree of ad hoc experimentation in medications, dosages, and even spontaneous surgical experiments in the daily practice among slaves.” Since slavery people have been undergoing harmful procedures without their consent. They did not know what was happening to them.

Many of us do not think twice about going to the doctors. We trust our doctors to take care of us and have our best interests in mind. These women thought they would be safe and taken cared for within the limits they set. Consent needs to be enforced in the medical field and not taken advantage of, as this doctor did.