Unit-3-a-crime-of-compassion

Book 6 Unit 3Unit ThreeI. Lead-inMovie ClipWatch the following video and then do the exercise. You can find the interpretation of some words and phrases in Word Bank.Book 6 Unit 3.mp4 (00:00 02:40)ScriptElephant survival depends on profiting from the experience of many lifetimes. This baby elephant was born last night, and the whole herd seems to welcome this new addition. But the mother is young and inexperienced. This is her first baby. If she is to produce milk, a mother must drink. And the newborn calf must keep up with her, as the herd continues on their long journey to find water. After eight kilometers, the calf is flagging. Enough is enough. The young mother encourages her calf to continue, but there is still a long way to go and the calf is already getting dehydrated. The elephants are now so close to water that they can smell it. Water, at last.(From BBC Documentary Life: Mammals)Word Bank1. herd: a large group of animals, in the video it refers to the group of elephantse.g. The truck could not move because a herd of buffaloes was blocking the road.2. flag:become limp, tired, or weake.g. If you begin to flag, there is an excellent caf to revive you.3. dehydrate:to lose water from the bodyExercise1. The baby elephants mother is _.A. oldB. inexperiencedC. sickD. impatient2. It seems the baby elephant cannot walk any longer because _.A. it was just bornB. it hasnt drunk any milkC. it has walked a long wayD. it has been abandoned by the herdKey: 1. B 2. CInspirational QuotesWhen you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, its best to let him run. Abraham Lincoln DiscussionDo you agree that the best way to protect an endangered animal is to keep it in a zoo and take good care of it? Why?II. Text IPre-reading Questions1. If you have ever witnessed the sufferings of a dying person, tell us the feelings that the scene evoked from you.2. Do you think doctors and nurses should do everything within their means to try to save a terminally ill patient even when they know clearly all their efforts would mean nothing more than prolonging his suffering?General ReadingI. Determine which of the following best states the purpose of the writing.A. To recount her horrifying experience of caring for a terminally ill patient.B. To make an appeal for a terminally ill patients right to die.C. To demand that nurses be given the right to issue a no-code order. Key: BII. Judge whether the following statements are true or false.1. When Mac entered the hospital, he was apparently a normal person except for an enduring cough.2. Despite his worsening condition, Mac still had a strong wish to live.3. The medical community is divided on whether a patients life should be extended as long as possible under all circumstances.4. It can be inferred from the essay that doctors, not nurses, have the right to give a no-code order.5. In Mauras eyes, Huttmann was a murderer for not pushing the code blue button in time.Key: 1. T 2. F 3. T 4. T 5. FBackground Notes1. the Phil Donahue show: The Phil Donahue Show, also known as Donahue, is an American television talk show that ran for 26 years on national television. Its run was preceded by three years of local broadcast in Dayton, Ohio, and it was broadcast nationwide between 1967 and 1996. 2. code blue: Hospital emergency codes are used in hospitals worldwide to alert staff to various emergency situations. The use of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly and with a minimum of misunderstanding to staff. Text StudyTextA Crime of CompassionBarbara Huttmann1 Murderer, a man shouted. God help patients who get you for a nurse. 2 What gives you the right to play God? another one asked.3 It was the Phil Donahue show where the guest is a fatted calf and the audience a 200-strong flock of vultures hungering to pick at the bones. I had told them about Mac, one of my favorite cancer patients. We resuscitated him 52 times in just one month. I refused to resuscitate him again. I simply sat there and held his hand while he died.4 There wasnt time to explain that Mac was a young, witty macho cop who walked into the hospital with 32 pounds of attack equipment, looking as if he could single-handedly protect the whole city, if not the entire state. Cant get rid of this cough, he said. Otherwise, he felt great.5 Before the day was over, tests confirmed that he had lung cancer. And before the year was over, I loved him, his wife, Maura, and their three kids as if they were my own. All the nurses loved him. And we all battled his disease for six months without ever giving death a thought. Six months isnt such a long time in the whole scheme of things, but it was long enough to see him lose his youth, his wit, his macho, his hair, his bowel and bladder control, his sense of taste and smell, and his ability to do the slightest thing for himself. It was long enough to watch Mauras transformation from a young woman into a haggard, beaten old lady.6 When Mac had wasted away to a 60-pound skeleton kept alive by liquid food we poured down a tube, i.v. solutions we dripped into his veins, and oxygen we piped to a mask on his face, he begged us: Mercy . for Gods sake, please just let me go.7 The first time he stopped breathing, the nurse pushed the button that calls a code blue throughout the hospital and sends a team rushing to resuscitate the patient. Each time he stopped breathing, sometimes two or three times in one day, the code team came again. The doctors and technicians worked their miracles and walked away. The nurses stayed to wipe the saliva that drooled from his mouth, irrigate the big craters of bedsores that covered his hips, suction the lung fluids that threatened to drown him, clean the feces that burn his skin like lye, pour the liquid food down that tube attached his stomach, put pillows between his knees to ease the bone-on-bone pain, turn him every hour to keep the bedsores from getting worse, and change his gown and linen every two hours to keep him from being soaked in perspiration.8 At night I went home and tried to scrub away the smell of decaying flesh that seemed woven into the fabric of my uniform. It was in my hair, the upholstery of my car there was no washing it away. And every night I prayed that Mac would die, that his agonized eyes would never again plead with me to let him die.9 Every morning I asked his doctor for a no-code order. Without that order, we had to resuscitate every patient who stopped breathing. His doctor was one of several who believe we must extend life as long as we have the means and knowledge to do it. To not do it is to be liable for negligence, at least in the eyes of many people, including some nurses. I thought about what it would be like to stand before a judge, accused of murder, if Mac stopped breathing and I didnt call a code.10 And after the fifty-second code, when Mac was still lucid enough to beg for death again, and Maura was crumbled in my arms again, and when no amount of pain medication stilled his moaning and agony, I wondered about a spiritual judge. Was all this misery and suffering supposed to be building character or infusing us all with the sense of humility that comes from impotence?11 Had we, the whole medical community, become so arrogant that we believed in the illusion of salvation through science? Had we become so self-righteous that we thought meddling in Gods work was our duty, our moral imperative and legal obligation? Did we really believe that we had the right to force life on a suffering man who had begged for the right to die?12 Such questions haunted me more than ever early one morning when Maura went home to change her clothes and I was bathing Mac. He had been still for so long, I thought he at last had the blessed relief of coma. Then he opened his eyes and moaned, Pain . no more . Barbara . do something . God, let me go.13 The desperation in his eyes and voice riddled me with guilt. Ill stop, I told him as I injected the pain medication.14 I sat on the bed and held Macs hands in mine. He pressed his bony fingers against my hand and muttered, Thanks. Then there was one soft sigh and I felt his hands go cold in mine. Mac? I whispered, as I waited for his chest to rise and fall again.15 A clutch of panic banded my chest, drew my finger to the code button, urged me to do something, anything . but sit there alone with death. I kept one finger on the button, without pressing it, as a waxen pallor slowly transformed his face from person to empty shell. Nothing Ive ever done in my 47 years has taken so much effort as it took not to press that code button.16 Eventually, when I was sure as I could be that the code team would fail to bring him back, I entered the legal twilight zone and pushed the button. The team tried. And while they were trying, Maura walked into the room and shrieked, No . dont let them do this to him . for Gods sake . please, no more.17 Cradling her in my arms was like cradling myself, Mac, and all those patients and nurses who had been in this place before, who do the best they can in a death-denying society.18 So a TV audience accused me of murder. Perhaps I am guilty. If a doctor had written a no-code order, which is the only legal alternative, would he have felt any less guilty? Until there is legislation making it a criminal act to code a patient who has requested the right to die, we will all of us risk the same fate as Mac. For whatever reason, we developed the means to prolong life, and now we are forced to use it. We do not have the right to die. Words and Phrases1. self-righteous adj. having a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or superior 2. meddle in: interfere ine.g. Young people today do not like their parents to meddle in their lives.meddle with touch or handle sth. without permissione.g. You can use my room but youre not supposed to meddle with my stuffs, especially my computer.Notes1. to play God: to function as God, i.e. to decide when to terminate a persons life. Christians believe that only God has the right to decide when a persons life should end.2. When Mac had wasted away to a 60-pound skeleton: When Mac had been reduced to a 60-pound skeleton waste away (of a person or a part of the body) become progressively weaker and more emaciated e.g. She is dying of AIDS, visibly wasting away.3. i.v. solutions: i.v. is the abbreviation of intravenous, meaning within a vein, and i.v. solutions refers to the liquid substances infused directly into the vein of a patient for therapeutic purposes.4. irrigate the big craters of bedsores: The verb irrigate normally means to supply water to land or crops to help growth. In medicine, the word can be used to mean to apply a continuous flow of water or medication to an organ or a wound.5. suction the lung fluids that threatened to drown him: drain the excessive lung fluids that threaten his life6. that seemed woven into the fabric of my uniform: that seemed to have become an element of the fabric of my uniformweave sth. into include sth. as an integral part or element (of a fabric); include an element in a story, an artistic work, etc.e.g. Some golden threads are woven into the fabric.Argumentative paragraphs are naturally woven into Huttmanns narration. 7. to be liable for negligence: to be held responsible for failing to perform my dutybe liable for to be responsible for by law, to be legally answerable tobe liable to be likely to do or to be something, likely to experience sth. (unpleasant)e.g. Once you have contacted the credit card protection scheme, you are no longer liable for any loss that might occur.He is suffering from hypertension and thus is liable to fall if he gets up too suddenly.The low-lying areas are liable to floods during the rainy season.8. when no amount of pain medication stilled his moaning and agony: when his pain was so acute that no matter how much pain-relieving medication was used, his suffering could not be easedstill vt. & vi.e.g. He clapped his hands to still the agitated audience.When night fell, the village which was boisterous with tourists in the daytime stilled.9. I wondered about a spiritual judge.: I wondered if there was a spiritual judge (as against a legal judge), who would be supportive of my decision not to push the code blue button, thus to put an end to all this.10. building character: developing his personal qualities (so that he could face up to the adversity better)11. the blessed relief of coma: Coma refers to a state of deep unconsciousness that lasts for a prolonged period, caused especially by severe injury or illness. When in a coma, the patient is not conscious of any pain. Thats why Huttmann thinks it is a blessed relief.12. riddled me with guilt: filled me with a strong sense of guiltThe verb riddle here means fill or permeate sb. or sth. esp. with sth. unpleasant or undesirable.13. A clutch of panic banded my chest: I was so seized by panic that I felt simply suffocatedclutch n. graspband v. surround (an object) with sth. in the form of a strip or ring, typically for reinforcement or decoration (usu. be banded )e.g. The doors to the warehouse are all banded with iron to make them stronger. 14. a waxen pallor slowly transformed his face from person to empty shell: the unhealthily pale colour of his face indicated that he was sinking15. the legal twilight zone: Twilight zone refers to a situation of confusion or uncertainty, which seems to exist between two different states or categories. Thus the legal twilight zone Huttmann says she entered here refers to the situation in which her action of pushing the button to call code blue can be deemed either legal or not legal.16. a death-denying society: a society where its members are not given the right to die17. Until there is legislation making it a criminal act to code a patient who has requested the right to die .: Until it becomes law that it is a criminal act to call a resuscitation team to save a patient who has voluntarily asked for the right to die . Questions1. There seems to be a contradiction in the title A Crime of Compassion. What is it?Key: There are various kinds of crimes, but criminals can be anything but compassionate. It is hardly possible to associate compassion with any crime and being compassionate with a criminal. 2. Huttmann begins her essay with a metaphor. Locate it and then explain it. (para. 3)Key: The first sentence of para. 3: It was the Phil Donahue show where the guest is a fatted calf and the audience a 200-strong flock of vultures hungering to pick at the bones. Huttmann likens herself (the guest of the talk show) to a fatted calf, and the audience to a flock of more than 200 vultures hungering to pick at the bones. With the metaphor she intends to tell the reader that the way she handled the case of Mac was strongly disapproved of by the general public, and that the concept of mercy killing was unacceptable to them.3. Where in the essay can we find descriptions of Macs condition when he was being treated? Why do you think Huttmann is being so specific and detailed? (paras. 6 & 7)Key: Mostly in para. 6, and the latter part of para. 7. She gives such detailed and specific descriptions of Macs condition to make vivid to the reader the horrifying sufferings Mac had to endure, ultimately to support her argument that a patient in such condition should be given the right to die if he should so request.4. Was it a difficult decision for Huttmann to make not to push the button in time? (para. 15)Key: Obviously it was, as she relates in para. 15 Nothing Ive ever done in my 47 years has taken so much effort as it took not to press that code button.5. Where does Huttmann state her thesis? (para. 18)Key: In the last paragraph: Until there is legislation making it a criminal act to code a patient who has requested the right to die, we will all of us risk the same fate as Mac. For whatever reason, we developed the means to prolong life, and now we are forced to use it. We do not have the right to die.Activity1. In the Phil Donahue Show Huttmann as a guest was accused of murder by most, if not all, of the audience with regard to Macs death. Put yourself in Huttmanns position and give a talk to defend yourself.Sentence patterns for your referenceIt appears that . but .If you had . you would .Due to the reasons .2. Thirty years after the publication of Huttmanns essay, euthanasia is still an unsettled issue in todays world. Form two groups, one for legitimizing euthanasia and the other against it, and have a debate on the issue.Sentence patterns for your referenceWe hold that . because .Nevertheless .To sum up, .Organization and DevelopmentArgumentative NarrationWhat Is Argumentative NarrationIf an essay is basically an argumentative one and the chief means used for argumentation is narration, it is called argumentative narration.Text AnalysisHuttmann begins the essay with the incident that the TV audience lodged strong accusations against her for murdering a patient she was supposed to care for. But her response does not follow immediately. She withholds her response to the accusation until the last paragraph, where the audiences accusation of her is mentioned again, and her argument is presented.Most of the essay is devoted to the narration of the painful dying process of a terminally ill cancer