Health & Wealth

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As I wrote earlier in the week, our niece slashed the Gordian knot when she advised her mom, who is caregiver for E.'s mom, that if E.'s mom is in terrible pain and the nursing home staff shrugs and says those suffering from dementia (which mom isn't) groan as if in pain.

But we are wise and know they aren't.

Our niece's advice was elegant in its simplicity. Ask nursing home staff to call 911 and do it yourself if they won't. So Esther did. When mom got to the hospital, the admitting doctor looked at her and about six seconds later said: "Dehydration. Massive infection."

They are treating. No prognosis yet. A family friend called E. this morning and reassured her that the friend has asked the nurses to let her know if they think mom's death is imminent, so the other daughters can be summoned. Aforementioned family friend thinks Esther, the caregiver, will be in denial to the end.

Finally, mom seems to be getting proper treatment, and that made me think about the very rich like Howard Hughes and Michael Jackson who are able to afford not just the very best treatment but also the very worst from quacks and charlatans who will play to their patients' psychological weaknesses. Jacko hired his own death panel, and he got what he paid for.

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Michael Jackson, India and Globalization

Image by Current News Stories via Flickr

Media Studies colleague Vamsee Juluri explains:


But the coming of Michael Jackson to Indian television was also the equivalent, for good or for bad, of the empty bottle of cola that falls from a plane into a remote African village in the movie The Gods Must be Crazy. Michael Jackson was not just a pop star for us; he represented the world beyond India we had only heard about as well as the possibility of catching up with it. Michael Jackson was the first symbol of aspiration for a generation that went from denial to obsession about it almost overnight. In the 1980s, bootleg VHS copies of Thriller went from home to home, even as we sought to work hard and study and buy into the first signs of consumerism that had started to appear. By the 1990s, with economic liberalization and the rise of satellite television channels like MTV India and Channel V, Michael Jackson, his music, image, and charisma all became a part of India, like globalization itself, culminating in his 1996 Mumbai concert and his now poignantly never-to-be promise to return.