Watching the videos on RA it was interesting to observe the concordance between Charmaz’s text and reality.The first that struck me was a video of a young woman with RA discussing how another person she knows was affected by RA and in particular how her friend was affected by the medications.A quote in the text: “This patient said incredulously, 'She [the other patient] was having a lot of strange symptoms, and I just looked at her and I realized that she was dying . . . it just went through my head this lady is dying from the drugs that they are giving her.'”Interestingly, after watching a video of an older woman with RA it seemed that such concordance isn’t necessarily consistent, as a lot of the negatives described in Charmaz’s text came across as having been avoided by this lady. She gave no indication of social isolation, loss of self or the feeling of being a burden (this however could simply be due to the brief nature of the excerpt . The woman in question appeared to have a well defined illness narrative, believing she had ‘arthritisy bones’ since she fell off a horse at a much younger age
I do agree with you that concordance between Charmaz's text and reality is not necessarily consistent. It is very important to clarify that every person has his/her own, unique personality and not all of the patients react with the same way. So, it is very interesting to observe the impact of the illness to every patient seperately. Also, the two examples, you wrote, are really pointful.
While I do appreciate the general overview Charmaz's text offers, I prefer the video interviews on the RA website. After all, those are 'real experiences' told by patients.
Like you said, Marina, the Charmaz text doesn't really address the issue that every individual is different and might therefore see his or her illness in another way.
I totally agree with you on the "individual" issue! However, although the interviews on the RA website are "real experiences", I wonder how the website choose their example patients. Did they include patients from different social classes?
I'm not sure about every individual being different.... see the thread on 'When Everything Changes....' for a linked discussion.
I'd be really interested to hear thoughts on this as it is so relevant to qualitative research.
I kinda felt Charmaz study was 'individual'. Particularly with the quotes (transcripts???) from the different patients. It showed different emotions to the disease, well different reactions around the same feeling of lossing self. Or maybe i don't understand what you mean by individual.
Oh great. I didn't watch this video you speak of, Sam. I wish I did. Because really, i think it would be nice to have more 'positives' (if it could really be called that) come from having a chronic disease. I'm a asthma patient. Sure mine is not as bad as limiting my life (while only when i learnt that because i had it, my son was at danger of having it too - and in fact we had been on ventolin syrup whenever the temperature drops or dusts kick in - did i feel this 'asthma' is a real problem. I assume there are people like that. Maybe like the example given during the lecture itself, with the epileptic man. Yes, this disease is limiting. Yes, this disease makes me a little less 'normal', but worse things could have happened. That's the angle I wish Charmaz could have explored more.
