HW 23 - Illness & Dying Book, Part 2

Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Random House, 2003

Precis: Farmer entered Harvard Medical School in the fall of 1984, he was only 24. He signed up for classes, got his textbooks and headed back to Haiti. He never had trouble passing his classes, in fact, he had some of the highest grades in his class. His professors understood what he was doing, and in fact, most of them embraced it. He was seeing diseases and situations everyday that most of the students there would never see in a lifetime. While he wasn't studying in class, he was studying with his friend and lover Ophelia Dahl. Daughter of famous writer Roald Dahl. Farmer wrote thousands of index cards on which he would write questions and then hints towards the answers. A good portion of his knowledge also came from experiences in the field including drug resistant TB. He would come back for midterms and finals, but Paul Farmer is a exception to the fact that you need school to learn.

Quotes:

1. "In the car, she started in on him, accusing him of self-righteousness. She didn't let up. Finally, he slammed on the brakes, reached across her, and pushed open her door. Get out! he yelled, and called her a foul name. She didn't obey. She sat rigidly in her seat, feeling both offended and also exultant, smiling inwardly, thinking, "Yes! I got to you. You have this human quality. You're flawed." (p.97)
2. "But he went, right back into the thick of the trouble, demonstrators climbing over the car while soldiers clubbed them. He took several more bloodied civilians in, and came back unbloodied himself. "It was very important for Paul to witness things," Ophelia would say. (p.98)
3. The establishment of a school may seem a bit out of place given the homelessness, landlessness, and hunger of many of the water refugees. But it appears that they themselves did not feel that way. Children flocked to the new facility. One peasant woman explained, "A lot of us wondered what would have happened if we had known how to write." (p.91).

Paul Farmer hates dealing with death. The diseases he deals with have claimed a good number of his close friends, including Father Jack. To him death isn't something that should be an everyday worry. He became a doctor so he could bring some kind of medical care to one of the most impoverished nations in the world. He wanted to help people. He went to the root of the problem. He knew that the root of the health problems came from malnutrition, bad water and just bad overall living conditions. He did more then throw drugs at the problem. He rebuilt schools, gave people new roofs, and cement floors, fresh water that they didn't have to walk down a 900ft steep hill to get. He organized funds from friends from school and other anonymous rich donors. It was more then just money. It was his life. What i realized that this book wasn't meant to make Farmer famous. It was for people to understand what it takes to take a country from far below poverty and starvation, and put them back to 3rd world country status. This book was meant to inspire us and show us that we all have the ability to be extraordinary people. It is all just about what you decide to do with your life. You can choose to keep it to yourself and share it with your few friends. Or you can dedicate it to those around you and really realize what can be done to make some one else's life better.