The New Style, The New Me What if a life-threatening disease ironically became a lifesaver instead of a life-ender? The essay, “Finding my Cancer Style” by Suleika Jaouad discusses the balance of battling a disease, specifically leukemia. For some individuals, receiving the news of having a life-threatening illness forces them to actually start living and create a new style of themselves. So say the balance of that battle in Jaouad’s essay involves preparation of the devastations and treatments, as well as the tragic experiences taking place with this new style she is developing. The difficulties that fall upon her while she is overtaking this new style is emphasized dramatically. Jaouad’s message portrayed in this essay, refers closely …show more content…
The society is affecting her in ways that are making her suffer with the chemotherapy effects. As that suffering is occurring, the distressed tone is being shown. It also shows how the cancer is amplified by the idea of society over taking her personal, public figure. The idea that she “avoided going out in public,” (832) leads to the indication of her letting the chemotherapy overtake her life. We can also go back and relate the previous anaphora to the repetition of it’s beginning phrase “I felt.” It puts an emphasis on the relation to herself. An emotional point of view is created, which can actually build her ethos. Since she has personally gone through the experience, she has lived it. The audience can view her as a credible source and trust her words within her essay. Therefore, Jaouad is portraying the suffering of the chemotherapy operations and pain to show the audience the negative effects that create the distressed tone. To further conduct the alteration of tone that is expressed by creating new positives, Jaouad uses anecdotes throughout her essay. In a compound sentence, Jaouad proclaims that “Cancer may not be a choice, but style is” (832). This is drawing the reader into the anecdote that is illustrated with a picture of herself once she begins to feel the opposite of “unsexy” (832) and “uncool” (832). Due to her hair growing “a few inches long again” (832) she “dyed it purple and wore it as a mohawk” (832). This is depicting that anecdote of
The Narrator feels suffering is something we cannot control and is ridiculous to cry over as she
The first passage reveals the parallel suffering occurring in the lives of different members of the family, which emphasizes the echoes between the sufferings of the father and the narrator. The narrator’s father’s despair over having watched
The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee is not just a book about cancer; it is a story about one disease’s ability to change the course of humanity. My father handed me the book when I was thirteen, and it changed the way I thought about medicine. This new perspective complemented my fascination with maps, which allowed me to understand the many places and people I could never see. After years of flipping through atlases and reading about cancer in my father’s office, I realized the remarkable role doctors have had in pushing the progression of the human race. I quickly became infatuated with medicine and its impact on the world. From stepping into the emergency room at my local hospital to see the effect of medicine on people first-hand to presenting a website about
In the second part of the sentence, it seems as though the woman doesn't want to believe what her husband is telling her thus setting the stage for her rebellion. All her husband wants her to do is rest and sleep: he even suppresses her creative talent by not allowing her to write. She is in constant fear of being caught by her husband; "I must put this away, -he hates to have me write a word." It seems as though John is being more of a father than a husband and because of this, she feels that she should be a "good girl" and appreciate what he is doing for her even though she knows that his diagnosis is killing her. "He takes all care from me, and I feel so basely ungrateful not to value it more...He took me in his arms and called me blessed little goose..." This is a clear indication of someone trying to run another person's life. By him not allowing her to write he is causing her depression to worsen. If she had been "allowed" to come and go as she pleased, her depression may have lifted: "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve, the press of ideas and rest me." Her husband is suppressing the one major outlet that will help her get better in her seclusion, "writing." By absolutely forbidding her to work until she is well again he is imprisoning her and causing her depression. John has made her a prisoner not only in their home but also in
First, the writings of her journal show that the narrator is not convinced with her “rest cure” treatment. Her writings depict that her husband, John, continuously belittles her condition and concerns while she knows that her illness is real and more severe than he
Sometimes in life things just happen and we have no control over them but we learn to move forward in spite of everything we face. When Nick receives his diagnosis for cancer, it frightens him greatly to the point where he begins to see death everywhere. He becomes adamant that his life could be lost to the same disease that took his father’s life. Not knowing how to deal with the news, he asks the
Getting prepared for death can be an exhausting experience for the patient and their family. It is very important that the patient not only knows what they want as far as their right to receive or reject treatment and medications or knowing whether they want to receive palliative care at home or in a hospital setting to include the advantages and disadvantages of each. The main focus of this paper is to give the reader an in depth look on how an end of life crisis affects a patient and their family. Ella is a breast cancer patient who just came out of remission and is at the end of her life.
Dennis P. Kimbo once said, “Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” Despite the numerous obstacles of life, people can choose how they react. Today, many people are faced with the obstacle of life threatening diseases. By some diseases being incurable, the cloud of only having so much longer to live hangs over them. As a result, some may choose the option of euthanasia if it is available. In the contrasting pieces of writing, Kara Tippetts use of ethos about euthanasia is more convincing than Brittany Maynard use of logos.
Talbot beings her essay with a relatable spokesperson by the name of Alex, who is a graduate from Harvard and establishing an informal and personal tone to her article. By creating a personal tone to begin her article she draws the reader’s attention by giving them someone to relate to was well as what Alex is going through. She gives the readers experiences
As many patient´s illness beings to progress, many are left feeling “useless” as their health begins to deteriorate and they are unable to function as they used to. And from scheduled check-ups to surgeries, the hospital bill begins to rack up which may cause patients to feel like burdens to the family. According to a case study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, a 56-year-old man with leukemia and his wife/caregiver were unemployed due to his condition and her efforts to care for him. She had many caregiving responsibilities such as “cleaning, driving, preparing meals, and coordinating medication, oxygen and other treatment-related activities”. From having no source of income, her finances were limited leading to her close watch on expenses. Meanwhile, as she focused on her husband’s health, she had failed to address her own health conditions. Lacking a support system, the intense and unpredictable future associated with shouldering the burden of her husband's outpatient care created a stressful atmosphere as she alternated her daily life schedule in order to meet his needs. In many instances of cancer, a patient's’ chances of becoming mentally and physically disabled increases. Resulting from such disabling illnesses often leaves the patient's feeling helpless as they begin to lose parts of their minds and bodies.
To begin with, I will look at what cancer is. I would like to look at cancer as a disease and the social determinants of this perspective. I would then like to investigate cancer as an illness and look at the narrative of this experience including its social determinants. Finally, I will address the differences and similarities between the two.
Throughout the entirety of his memoir, Randy Pausch, a man dying of pancreatic cancer, is extremely upbeat and positive. He never pretends that his illness isn’t there, but also never dwells on the fact that it is. His doctor sums this attitude up perfectly by calling him “his poster boy for ‘the healthy balance between optimism and realism’ ” (Pausch 183). Being able to have a positive attitude is the most prominent and, to me, the most important lesson that The Last Lecture teaches. Randy’s understanding of optimism vs. pessimism comes simply from the childhood story, Winnie the Pooh: ”Each of us must decide: Am I a fun-loving Tigger or am I a sad-sack Eeyore?” (Pausch 180). Randy is clearly a Tigger, and I can very easily identify with that part of him. I am often too optimistic, to the point where I can be perceived as slightly obnoxious. But I’ve always lived by the “fake it ‘till you make it” idiom, meaning that when I truly feel bad about a situation I’m in, I can make myself feel better just by acting like things are okay. This doesn’t mean I am blind to real problems, I just do what I can to make them easier to deal with. I believe that Randy had similar beliefs regarding his cancer, as his “...personal take on optimism is that as a mental state, it can enable you to do tangible things to improve your physical state” (Pausch 183). All of the other ideals that Dr. Pausch lived by are important, but I think that his positivity is truly what enabled him to achieve his dreams and live a full
Their differences created the conflicts between them. John, as a physician, is very practical and rationalistic. He disregards the existence of anything that cannot be seen or felt and therefore does not believe that his wife was ill even though through reading her thoughts and emotions it was clear that she was suffering severely. The woman on the other hand, is very imaginative and sensitive. John believes that all his wife needs is rest and therefore her treatment is that she does no work and especially no writing. He felt that her condition would be made worst if she does any form of work or writing. The woman strongly disagrees with John on the type of treatment that he has suggested. She thinks that having daily activities, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and so she starts to create secret journal in an attempt to alleviate her mind and to prevent her illness from getting the best of her. John continuously suppresses her thoughts, feelings and concerns about her illness which portrays him in a sense as a “villain”. He does not provide her with the space or opportunity to try other alternatives other than the “rest cure” so that she might overcome her illness. The woman wants to write about her feelings and her conditions but she is not allowed and so she has to struggle to hide her writings from John and his sister. The fact that she cannot freely write and openly express her feelings to John strains her and drains
A terminal illness can generally be defined as an illness for which there is no cure and the prognosis is fatal. We all know that we will die someday but most of us think of this as some distant time. For individuals who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, though, they must face the reality of their own mortality and are forced to re-evaluate their lives and must make choices about how to best spend the remainder of their days. For the purposes of this paper I am focusing on the cultural differences between how American society copes with a terminal illness and how Jewish American’s cope. Coping with a terminal illness is not unique to any particular culture. How an individual reacts and prepares for their own inevitable
cause as it takes a long time for a cell to become cancerous, as there