Lydia’s Story by Jan Brideau, question responses

1.       1. Brideau’s main point was to show how the human spirit perseveres through tragedy. This was found in the last paragraph of Lydia’s Story as the author explains why Lydia’s story was so effective at staying with her.

2.     2.   The primary point of view that the author uses to narrate the story is third person point of view. As a reader, the effect of this point of view can feel overwhelming. As we are being told Lydia’s story, I felt like a bystander in an uncontrollably worsening situation. There was nothing we could do to help this woman as she struggled through surviving the rising water, and the helplessness she may have felt was mirrored in our reading of the story. The point of view the author uses, allows the audience to feel similarly to Lydia as she fights for her life, making the narrative more effective and personal.

3.    3.   Part of the reason Brideau’s narrative is so “lively” is because of her use of third person point of view, discussed above, but also because of her interesting diction. Words like “cackle” (2^nd paragraph), “bulky and heavy” (7^th paragraph), “precarious” (7^th paragraph), “cramped” (9^th paragraph), “crouched” (8^th paragraph), “screaming” (10^th paragraph), and “journey” (12^th paragraph), all contribute to the overall tone of the retelling. Instead of using words with less descriptive or emotional value, like dangerous instead of precarious, or small instead of cramped, Brideau created a more emotionally heavy, and charged tone because of the connotation that goes along with the words. The most interesting to me though, was the use of the word “journey” to describe the hardships and struggles Lydia would no doubt have to encounter when trying to pull a life back together after the storms. When thinking of the word journey, the first images that come to mind are exciting vacations, archeological discoveries, and oddly enough, the Hobbit. The last thing that I would think of would be Lydia’s story. The word choice though, does help to provide the reader with a more solid character in our heads. Although we already knew that Lydia was an intensely brave, level-headed, smart old woman, we also know that she is intensely positive, and has an indomitable spirit. Carving this character out, and making her seem as alive on the page as she seems to be in real life was an enormous part of why the narrative was so successful in portraying the lively tone of the story.

4.     4.  The immediate audience of this story would be the readers of the journal. When thinking about what the journal does though, health policies and research, it is interesting to think of what type of reader that would be. The first thing that comes to mind is a doctor or researcher, looking to understand the full effects and enormity of the two storms on the people who were affected by them. The tone is effective in portraying the personal hardships and struggles of watching your life be destroyed around you, and would be very helpful in sharing a personal message to those who were not directly affected in the same ways. When trying to reach medical professionals however, the most interesting part of the narrative would have to be when Lydia is picked up in the emergency vehicle. The responder, is a lifesaving twist for Lydia, but the reader is also forced to confront thoughts about the other people who were with her, and were ultimately left behind. There was only room for one person in the vehicle, and Lydia became the chosen one. We have to think about what happened to the others though. Where they eventually rescued? How long were they waiting there? How did they feel, watching this woman go, and not knowing if there would be anyone else to come for them? This intense personal reflection into the lives of others would be a very interesting set of questions for a medical policy maker and researcher to ask themselves, especially in light of how little was actually done to help those struggling in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita.

5.     5.   My mom, Christine, is 44 years old. She is an incredible 6’1” with bright red hair, and the warmest personality to have ever been found in a person. On January 21, 2014, she walked into a hospital, and had her life permanently altered. Walking out, she had new information that not only would burst the bubble of safety and familiarity she had built for her family, but would also change the way she looked at life forever. She had to look for a way to tell her family, a husband and three children, that the tumor that had been found weeks earlier in her colon, was indeed cancer. As she walked into our house later that evening, after making the journey back to Kingston from Seattle, she found her kids and mother in law waiting in the living room. Automatically, everyone knew. The words she spoke after, were the fatal blow, killing any shreds of hope that told her family that they were reading the situation wrong, that she was relieved, not sad, and thankful, not confused or worried. This started a year-long battle with stage 3 colorectal cancer. The first round of chemotherapy and radiation started not soon after that, and continued on for 2-3 months. After allowing her sick body to recuperate, my mom was on track for her first surgery. This was the one that everyone had been dreading, the removal of the softball sized tumor from her lower colon, and the creation of an ileostomy to allow her body to rest and heal. Going into the surgery, we had no idea if the ileostomy would be permanent or not, if she woke up with it on the right, it was only temporary, to be closed up during a second surgery, and if it was on the left, my mom would be left with it forever. She woke up, nervous and thirsty, to a temporary ileostomy. And the beginning of the end of her treatment. She healed, and was soon introduced to her second round of chemotherapy, this time infusion, for 5 months. This is when reality began to strike. The first part of her treatment was not especially traumatic, even the surgery because my mom at least was not aware while it was happening, but the infusion, was the worst. Every other week, we my mom would travel across the water to Seattle, while she paid people to save her life by pumping in chemicals that were literally attacking every cell in her body. Her energy seeped out of her and was replaced with a never ending stream of Oxaliplatin. Her nerve endings became live wires, altering the way they would feel forever, and her joints swelled and contorted themselves, causing pain whenever she would bend anywhere. It was working its way through her body though, and succeeding in killing the cancer cells that were still gripping onto her lymph nodes. After finishing her last course, we celebrated, and we celebrated more after her last surgery, when her ileostomy was closed, and she no longer felt horrified wearing tight clothing. Six months later, after a year of treatments, she is cancer free. She has discovered herself in ways she never thought she would, and has realized that even though she has never been in war, she has fought battles against her own body, and come out of it victorious. She has realized the true perseverance she is capable of, and has cemented herself into her families eyes as a hero.