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Book 6 Unit 3

Unit Three

I. Lead-in

Movie Clip

Watch the following video and then do the exercise. You can find the interpretation of some words and phrases in \ Book 6 Unit 3.mp4 (00:00 – 02:40)

Script

Elephant 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 Bank

1. herd:

a large group of animals, in the video it refers to the group of elephants

e.g. The truck could not move because a herd of buffaloes was blocking the road.

2. flag:

become limp, tired, or weak

e.g. If you begin to flag, there is an excellent café to revive you.

3. dehydrate:

to lose water from the body

Exercise

1. The baby elephant's mother is _________________.

A. old B. inexperienced C. sick D. impatient

2. It seems the baby elephant cannot walk any longer because ___________.

A. it was just born

B. it hasn't drunk any milk C. it has walked a long way

D. it has been abandoned by the herd

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Book 6 Unit 3

Key: 1. B 2. C

Inspirational Quotes

When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run.

— Abraham Lincoln

Discussion

Do 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 I

Pre-reading Questions

1. 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 Reading

I. 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 patient's right to die.

C. To demand that nurses be given the right to issue a \

Key: B

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Book 6 Unit 3

II. 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 patient's 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

\

5. In Maura's eyes, Huttmann was a murderer for not pushing the code blue button in time.

Key: 1. T 2. F 3. T 4. T 5. F

Background Notes

1. 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 Study Text

A Crime of Compassion Barbara Huttmann

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Book 6 Unit 3

1 \ 2 \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. \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 wasn't 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. \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 isn't 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 Maura's 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: \

7 The first time he stopped breathing, the nurse pushed the button that calls a \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 \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 didn't 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

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Book 6 Unit 3

of salvation through science? Had we become so self-righteous that we thought meddling in God's work was our duty, our moral imperative and legal obligation? Did we really believe that we had the right to force \

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, \do something ... God, let me go.\

13 The desperation in his eyes and voice riddled me with guilt. \the pain medication.

14 I sat on the bed and held Mac's hands in mine. He pressed his bony fingers against my hand and muttered, \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 I've 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, \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 Phrases

1. self-righteous adj. having a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct

or superior

2. meddle in: interfere in

e.g. Young people today do not like their parents to meddle in their lives. meddle with — touch or handle sth. without permission

e.g. You can use my room but you're not supposed to meddle with my stuffs, especially my computer.

Notes

1. to play God: to function as God, i.e. to decide when to terminate a person's life. Christians

believe that only God has the right to decide when a person's life should end.

2. When Mac had wasted away to a 60-pound skeleton: When Mac had been reduced to a

60-pound skeleton

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