Area 77

Dancing With Broken Bones is a book my friend gave me to read. It was very short but I’m glad I read it.

I experienced extreme sympathy for the people in this book throughout reading it. I always knew I was born in a stable home and was considered to be a privileged child. I know I am lucky, but I never actually knew how lucky I was.

My knowledge of the extremely poor consisted of those that live in third world countries. Disease is widespread and extreme hunger is very common. Extreme starvation is not as common in the book but the suffrage is the same.

Now I realize that the poor in supposedly rich countries also suffer just as much. They have to depend on others like the government and the public to help them out. Most of them do not receive proper medical treatment or attention and usually die a miserable death.

I feel really bad about the ones that have serious diseases and have nothing in their power to help themselves properly. Heart disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer are common things the poor might have to deal with while living on the streets or just barely making it in some run down apartment.

I cannot imagine how hard it must feel to know that you are dying slowly and there�s nothing you can do to save yourself. Many of the poor develop psychological problems as well and that is sad. They might feel depressed or disgusted about their situation. Then there is a risk of them becoming suicidal or violent towards themselves and even others.

The author described the situation of these homeless and poor people who are starving and are having a hard time living. They live day-to-day and that is a scary thing. It must be really bad to not know if you will have anything to nourish yourself with tomorrow.

Apart from what society is already doing, there are many more things that can be done to help the poor and/or better their situation. The only thing that would be of assistance to them is to help make living easier for them. Increase open kitchens and public clinics.

To help them get on some sort of a track with their lives, small places should be organized where the poor would be able to learn basic skills to work at certain jobs, like at a car mechanic�s garage or at a pluming company. They would then work with an overseer that tells them how to work certain things. That way, they would have learned a skill that could possibly give them another chance to do something about their situation by themselves.

Since it is their people that are suffering, the government should set aside an amount of money to be specifically spent on the medical care of those that desperately need it and are not able to get it themselves.

Basic antibiotics should be available for those living in poverty. I think that is the least that can be done in the least amount of time. Another thing that should be free for the poor are the vaccinations and immunities from the major infectious diseases. That would not only help the poor, it would also benefit the general public having less infected people walking the streets.

Since many of these poor are dying for some medical reason that they are aware of, I feel that their communities should offer help and support if the person wants to make a living will and/or let those in charge know the desired things to be done to dispose of the body.

The poor really go through a very rough time trying to live, recover, survive and get back on track. The book really stressed on this issue and like all other problems, as a society America must try to fix it as best they can because people are not meant to live like the people in this book.

Ofcourse I’m not trying to down play the other kind of poor people, but I feel that these ones aren’t getting much attention.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 2:07 am and is filed under World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.