Essay on Psychosocial Health Assessment

A high standard of human health is not only a source of quality life but also an assurance of sufficient economic production to sustain the different societal needs. The critical need for healthy life implies a proximate need to ensure activities that provide the emotional and physical needs of people suffering from both perennial and terminal illnesses. This essay provides a comprehensive assessment of George Smith who is a sixty-seven-year-old African American who has diabetes. Smith lives in Los Angles and traces his roots to the era of slavery in which his grandparents were forcibly transported to the new world as slaves. Smith significantly holds the narrative of African American transit to the Americas as a journey of transformation that not only defines his current life but also influences his value attached to life.

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Smith has three boys and two girls who are all past their high school education. Apart from working as a waiter in an inner city restaurant, Smith also runs multiple other part-time jobs as an office messenger and civilian spy for the Los Angeles Police Department. He feels motivated to work hard and defy the unfounded historical racism, discrimination, and social exclusion that African Americans had to contend with then. My single attachment to Smith draws from the resilience I noticed he had developed to his diabetic condition during one of my community work in the rural villages of Los Angeles. His sense of humor and high expectation in life despite the debilitating condition inspires me to embrace religion as a transformative social inclination that helps people overcome traumatizing and painful experiences with chronic infections.

Though Smith feels that there still exists some extent of exclusion of minority races to which he belongs in the activities of the United States, he acknowledges the fact that the American dream inspires everyone to work hard and achieve prosperity even amidst adversities. His neighborhoods consist mainly of middle income earning families, and the housing facilities are relatively less conducive compared to the whites. Homeless people throng the streets leading top his residence and controlled by criminal gangs with whom he had learned to interact with for safety. Heath facilities in his locality and the public spaces are overcrowded thus limiting places where he can perform outdoor workouts. Nonetheless, he perceives that the Obamacare has made health care services more accessible to the inner city residence where he lives.

Smith was diagnosed with diabetes aged twelve years old. This time coincided with the time when was recovering from a post-traumatic stress disorder attributable to the horrific experiences he underwent during the epical civil wars. He remembers his suffering in the hands of white criminal gangs such as Klu Klux Klan that were opposed to the clamor for equal rights by minority races in the United States. The realization that he had diabetes compounded with the myths and misconceptions about the disease makes him feel that he would not be alive today if he did not stick to a healthy lifestyle.

At the time of first diabetes diagnosis, Smith had to face a critical challenge of inadequate treatment information existing for diabetes. In fact, he refers to the experiences at first diagnosis with diabetes as the darkest moments in his life. He had to sterilize his insulin injection needs and glass syringes using boiled water every day. The lack of most of the tools available today for the use in diabetes treatment in the form of finger-stick blood sugarmeasuring device or disposable insulin syringes made Smith develop a sustained sense of worry about the available opportunities to survive the devastations of his condition. Due to his chronically high blood sugar levels, and the inability to control the two, his growth became stunted just like in most cases of diabetes occurring to juveniles even in the current age.

Inadequate information about the relationship between high cholesterol in the blood and vascular diseases. He had a history of heavy fast food intake. The sweet tasting fast foods made him develop a particular eating habit inclined towards overindulgence in them. Habitual consumption of fast foods such as cookies resulted in high amounts of sugar and cholesterol in Smiths blood. Due to the determined relationship between blood cholesterol and sugar, Smith was subjected to a diet consisting of high carbohydrates, and low-fat contents. He depended on insufficient information from medical practitioners about best medical practices to make daily decisions. One of such information is that carbohydrate raises blood sugar made compelled him to compensate it with high dosages of insulin. Smith depended on an injection of ten centimeters insulin using horse syringe. The injection was not only slow but also painful and eventually destroyed the fatty tissues underneath his thigh skin. Despite taking a diet consisting of low fats, he developed visible fatty growths on the eyelids and gray deposits around the eye iris.

During his twenties which in a typical situation should mark an individuals prime life, Smiths body systems began to function less efficiently. He developed sensationally painful kidney stones and progressively deformed feet with excruciatingly impaired sensation. Every time he noted an adverse change in his body functions, Smith consulted his doctor who consistently dissociated them with diabetes. Nonetheless, he later came to recognize the fact that the symptoms he underwent were common among people whose diabetes remain poorly managed. After a realization that he had to live with the condition as a chronic illness, Smith accepted it as a normal one. Later in his life, Smith lost hair on the lower parts of the legs which meant that he was developing peripheral vascular diseases. He became worried about this condition since it is a complication with the potential of progressing leading to an amputation.

During his routine exercise stress test, he was additionally diagnosed with cardiomyopathy. Cardiomyopathy is a health condition resulting from a replacement of the muscle tissue in the heart with a fibrous. Here, he risked being a victim of heart failure and eventual death. Through medical care from health practitioners and some information about the pathophysiology of diabetes, Smith felt that he was progressing well in his health. However, he suffered from multiple other medical complications. Some of the proximate health complications that have affected his health to date include night blindness macular edema, micro-neurysms, and early cataracts. He was slowly but progressively forced to spend much of his time sleeping amidst pain on the thighs. This pain on the thighs was attributable to a common but complication of diabetes that is in most cases not adequately diagnosed and barely pronounceable. This condition is called iliotibial band or tensor fascialata syndrome. The frozen shoulders created a pain which made wearing clothes a painful experience.

In fear and anxiety, Smith took a relentless initiative to perform a daily test of his urine for traces of protein. His tests proved his concerns that he was progressively suffering from a type 1 diabetic with proteinuria. The diabetes was moving towards its advanced stages. This fact was confirmed by the substantial amounts of proteins that he often found in his self-tested urine samples. He could not stand the trauma of knowing that death awaited him at the end of the suffering. He sometimes remembered the story that his friend had narrated to him about the challenges his sister experienced before eventually succumbing to a type one diabetes. In fact, his memories haunted him and set him to experiencing nightmares about his deteriorating health condition. At about fifty-five years old, Smith developed multiple diabetic complications that made him appear chronically ill and prematurely aged. He was shaken by the fact that it was only some short time left before he could die and never again see the children he had struggled to educate and feed growing up into responsible adults. He wondered why life would be so unfair as to subject him to struggle to bring up his children only to impose him on a granule death process when he ought to have been enjoying aging.

Through the suggestions of his aging father, Smith started going for daily physical fitness and workouts in a local gymnasium. This choice was driven by the perceptions that regular exercise would be the best remedy for the pain he was suffering. In his mind, Smith had an ultimate desire to I feel better even if he was suffering from a debilitating health condition. Smith also thought that physical activity could make him feel better and alleviate his deteriorating health than just sleeping and limited movement. Despite becoming active, Smith could not even build muscles or get much stronger after repeated episodes of participating in fitness activities.

In fear of death and an attempt to remain actively involved in restoring personal death, Smith took in so much iron into his body. He stayed overweight but feeble irrespective of the activity that he performed. Workouts ceased to be an efficient pathway he could use to achieve a healthy life from a type one diabetes. When the pain, agony, and emotional distress resulting from the fear of death bewildered his conscience, Smith resorted to joining critical social support networks that would enable him to leverage the realities of his chronic illnesses and the pain he had to undergo. One of the sources of such social support was the family. His wife who is a professional physician affirmed to him that he needed to spend much of his life being part of, experiencing, or recovering from hypoglycemia. Hypoglycaemia is a health condition that occurs due to excessively low sugar content in the blood. This hypoglycemia reduced sugar levels were characterized by fatigue, headache, and general body weakness. Much of his biological response often resulted from the unpredictable effects of the massive insulin dosages. During such difficult health episodes, Smith would become confused, arrogant and snapped at people. The frequent occurrences of this condition worried his parents, wife, and children who were often in direct contact with him.

Smith is a Protestant Christian who belongs to the Seventh Day Adventist church. His religion inspires him to struggle overcoming pain and suffering resulting from the diabetic conditions. He believes that God heals and makes individuals to undergo pain like diabetes as a way of testing their faith. Though his religious belief sometimes relieved him from the fear of death and made interventions more relieving. Ideally, his faith made him less predisposed to chronic pain and fatigue. He insisted on regularly attending church proceedings and participating in the religious pastoral work. Every time he was overcome by grief, Smith passionately played to inspire his hope and make him cope with the suffering therein.

Though Smith mostly depended on the general public groupings, the Church provided the best approach to dealing with the chronic pain and fatigue attributable to type one diabetes. He resolved to active participation in Bible study groups, home visitations and choir groups to rejuvenate his faith about the significance of life, even if it was replete with varying challenges. Sometimes he prayed for a miraculous healing of his diabetes and even stopped his insulin injections. His endurance of the condition compounded with the longing for a healthy life triggered struggle. Smiths religious inclination to a healing God made him develop a particular doubt if he could be healed. The persistent physical pain remains even with unrelenting prayers also caused him a religious doubt in...