Forum Discussion
Amish living.....
maratsade wrote:That's really very sad, GabeU. I would imagine it happens fairly often.
It is, and it does, unfortunately, happen much more often than it should. Luckily, the aversion to modern medicine, or at least more invasive modern medicine, kind of varies from family to family, as there have been others in similar situations who DID seek professional treatment.
The hardest thing to deal with this the fact that you can't convince them otherwise. In the situations I mentioned my mother tried to convince them that they truly needed professional treatment, but you can only say so much before you begin to offend their beliefs, and she definitely didn't want to do that. It's kind of one of those situations where you know the proverbial train wreck is coming, but you can't convince them to not park their buggy on the tracks. :(
GabeU, It's definitely an ethical dilemma -- you want to help, but how much do you actually intrude? They have beliefs, and intruding too much would attack those beliefs, and then you would be out of their sphere and unable to help at all. I don't envy the position your mother was in.
maratsade wrote:GabeU, It's definitely an ethical dilemma -- you want to help, but how much do you actually intrude? They have beliefs, and intruding too much would attack those beliefs, and then you would be out of their sphere and unable to help at all. I don't envy the position your mother was in.
Exactly. You want to convince them to save their lives, but you can only say so much so as to not, for lack of a better term, scare everyone off. I didn't envy her position, either, that's for darn sure. :(
I hope that overall, the balance was positive, with more people helped than lost. I imagine she made a big difference on many lives.
