How Cancer Changed My Life

In 2009 my uncle was diagnosed with Cancer. Much like Sundiata, he did not display and fear in the face of danger. No matter how much his condition worsened, he stayed strong and shed no tears. For the sake of his family and friends, he did not want to show weakness. After his diagnosis, he underwent chemotherapy as well as many surgeries. He continued to work and support his family for as long as he could.

A woman name Angela Hundley and her family were away on a family vacation in the Dominican Republic. While there Angela ate fish that caused her to become very ill. Two weeks after they returned home from their vacation she was diagnosed with ciguatera poisoning. She could not open her eyes or lift her head. The doctor informed the family that the poisoning was untreatable, and an incurable. Angela felt like she was in a comma, she couldn’t move but she could hear everything. She could hear her children playing but she couldn’t play with them. She remembers her husband taking her to her church for prayer and at the alter she recalls her pastor asking her “Angela have you thanked God through any of this, even if you don’t see another day,

I received the news, that my mother had no chance to live and one doctor, placed his hand on my shoulder and sighed loudly with discomfort. He said,” she is not a candidate for any treatment.” I stormed into the ICU room, and held my mother’s hand; she glared at me, unconsciously. I couldn't help but hold back my emotions, so I could be strong for our family. As my eyes were helplessly filling up with tears, I couldn't help but to look around at the doctors and nurses working diligently, and doing the best they could for my mother. At the moment, I remembered the sacrifices that were made to help my mother and how saving lives was my calling from God. Thankfully, my mother survives but only at a twenty percent ejection

During my sophomore year, I became depressed and antisocial due to problems in my life. My mother has been sick with a brain tumor since 2009 and she was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2012. It has been very hard on me and especially for my mother. I worry about her because she has shown signs of severe depression, she often talks about that she would rather be dead than alive anymore. After all of the pain, all of the humiliation of not being able to walk well, the embarrassment of not being able to write well, all of the staring and comments I would hear about my mother, she is still strong. After 6 years of pain and suffering along the way, I do not blame her. Everything seems to get worse. She now needs surgery due to avascular necrosis that was caused by many years of chemotherapy. I began to lose motivation slowly because I did not have any friends in any of my classes and I felt like I was stuck in a

I remember thinking about how fortunate I was for having none of my family members to die from cancer. It was just another late night of working hard in the laboratory trying to find something. It was precisely 10 o’clock at night where I had never felt so accomplished. I had finally done it, I found the cure to cancer. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes when I had been reading the chart, but when I gave the antibodies to cancer patients their symptoms left and their cancer had been cured. I was 35 when I had found the cure and I lived in Iowa City, which is where I met my wife. I called my wife, Selena, and told her about my discovery and she started crying. It was a different type of cry..no it wasn’t tears from joy, it was tears from sadness. I asked Selena why she was crying. That day was never forgotten, not because of my discovery, but of the news that my wife told me. Our son passed away that afternoon from Lung Cancer. I was devastated. I went into a deep depression and I kept asking myself, “why couldn’t you have found the cancer just a couple hours earlier.” My story was all over the news, for awhile I never cared about anything but my son. I had received an extremely high number of money. I didn’t care about money anymore. I gave over half of it to people who needed it more than I did. I didn’t feel like doing interviews until about 6 months after his death. I learned something from my experience, In order to achieve your goal, sacrifices will need to be made. I found the cure to the most deadliest thing in the world but I had lost my most prized

Eight years ago, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was receiving chemotherapy not too long before he passed away. When he got admitted into the hospital for the last time, my family and I took turn to be with him throughout the day. I remember the kind nurses that genuinely took care of us for the time that we stayed. They made sure we had a comfortable place to sleep and that we fed ourselves even though we had no appetite to eat at the moment. Until my dad's last breath, they were there to comfort and shared prayers with us. It was comforting to know that the nurses were there for us because my family and I had no one else besides each other since none of our relatives live in the States.

At that point all I would ever hear from people was, “oh you poor thing”, or “I’m sorry!” The only thing I heard was people pitying me, but in contrary, those words and moments only sparked a strength that I never thought was achievable. I promised myself to turn those words that represented sorrow into drive to fuel that strength. The first memory that I realized that inner strength was when I was first told that I had cancer. I heard the door click open, five doctors appeared in their white coats, they would come in surrounding me at the hospital bed. I just laid there confused about why all of this was happening. None of them spoke for a minute. My guess is that they were trying to figure out how to tell a fourteen-year-old that she has cancer as if they expected me to start breaking down sobbing. Instead, my eyes refused to shed a single tear as just hearing the words, “ You have cancer.” Those three words turned my life upside down in a matter of a second. Then I proceeded to process them in my mind. Trying to calculate a solution as if it were a math problem. As if it was that easy, but I still managed to ask the question that I never

James Hosmer was a fisherman, a hunter, a gardener, and an office worker. He thought he was healthy most of his life. He couldn’t wait to retire soon. He had worked his whole life to get to this point. Then tragedy struck, he went to his doctor one day because he was having pain all over his body. That pain ended up being cancer. The cancer would stop him from planting his garden, the cancer would stop him from getting that big fish, and spending time with grandchildren. The cancer would also stop him from his lifelong dream of seeing his daughter Susana Nwosu graduate from nursing school. It was a slow and painful death. The person that was once full of life, happiness, and energy was gone. There was just a shell of a person left. He

In the autumn of 2013 my beloved grandmother suffered from many medical complications. After discovering esophageal cancer, surgery to remove it caused a tear in her esophagus, which led to numerous health hazards. As a result, the cancer spread throughout my grandmother’s bloodstream and it was impossible to maintain her health. By October of the same year, she fought to maintain her optimistic personality that I admired so dearly as a child. There was nothing more the doctor’s could do and while she wasn’t able to speak clearly, she understood the circumstances completely. As my mother asked her if she was ready to rest she pointed up to the heavens with her eyes closed. As we said our goodbyes she was given morphine until she was no longer with us. To force my grandmother to suffer and endlessly wait for healing would have been selfish of us. It is hard for those of us who are healthy to consider death as a logical option in crucial situations. While it is a difficult concept to grasp, in certain circumstances it is the better

The memoir, Miracles from Heaven, written by Christy Beam really made me realize how there is nothing more important than health. Annabel Beam, a nine year old girl, faced a rare incurable disorder that didn’t allow her to digest food. Christy Beam visited so many doctors to find a cure for this miserable disease but nothing worked. Reading about Annabel’s struggles and her mom’s attempts to heal Annabel really got me worried. However, reading the book alone wasn’t enough; that’s when I willingly sat down to watch the movie. That one hour forty-nine minute movie taught me to realize how many people struggle between life and death constantly. The book and the movie made me extremely upset and made me recall the time when my mom, my sister and

I will never forget my last day in the hospital after being diagnosed. Finally after nearly a month of bad food and sharing a room with a four year old having just been diagnosed with cancer they were finally letting me leave. I almost felt out of place returning back to my home Pulling up on my driveway I felt scared; I knew my life had changed forever. I distinctly remember clutching at my wrist, the wrist where my hospital identification bracelet was as if I was missing something. I tried holding back my tears; however, the more I tried the more futile it seemed. I kept replaying the doctor’s voice in my head, the voice I overheard from the hall when I was supposed to be sleeping. “Your son is very sick. His life is about to change forever and it will take time for him to adjust “ the doctor said to my mom. Thinking back to this, I can only dream of discovering Emerson then; how much better these last few years would have been if I had. I could

A 6-year-old girl was diagnosed with stage IV anaplastic Wilms’ tumor and had to undergo experimental chemotherapy, with less than a 5 percent chance of curing the deadly disease. Sadly, the personal account of this young child is highlighted in “Tell the Children” in the Journal of Clinical Oncology—written by Joanne Hilden, Jan Watterson, and Jody Chrastek, all from a hospital’s department of Hematology/Oncology. Not only does this young girl have to fight a relentless cancer, but she has to also go through this battle without understanding what she is dealing with. Hilden, Watterson, and Chrastek states that the parents were offered help in explaining to their daughter and her sister what may possibly happen: hospice (3193). Unfortunately, the parents’ response was, “We do not want the children told about this. Children should not have to deal with death. They should be free from that for as long as possible. We will answer what they ask, but we will not tell them what is happening or that our daughter is dying, and we do not want you to tell them, either” (3193). As a result of non-existent communication between the parent and the child, the young patient experienced a great deal of suffering and confusion. The parents declared that their child was comfortable; although, as time went on the child actually admitted to staff that she was, indeed, in pain (3193).

After a while of sitting in my grandparents living room mindlessly playing with my toys I decided to get up. I walked towards the commotion going on in the small hallway connecting the living room to the kitchen. The gathering of people consisted of my mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma. Curious about what was going on I walked over to the group. I reached my mom and looked up to see that her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying. I looked over to my dad and his face, like everyone else's, was grim. During this time I kept hearing one repeating word, cancer. I started to listen more closely to the conversation going on around me because even at the age of seven I knew that cancer was bad news. I listened intently and heard my mom explain how she had colon cancer.

Green", he repeats himself, "There is no easy way to put this, but sometimes when we run test, we find something we weren't expecting.", he pauses for a second, placing his hands on his lap,"This is what happened here. As you know we were testing for diabetes, she doesn't have diabetes. That's good,",As he said this, his voise went a little higher,"but there is some bad news. Mrs. Green ,your daughter has cancer." I could feel my heart drop out of my chest down to my feat, sitting there broken into a million pieces. I sit there gasping for air, but getting no oxygen. Why would God so this to me, I am a Christian. I go to church every Sunday and Wensday, I gave my life to him. I sing in the church chior and even help with the little kids durning Sunday School. Cancer? How could this be? I'm only sixteen and I have cancer. Am I going to have kemo? Great now I am going to loose my hair. I don't want to go bald. Now my eye sight is beginning to get a little blury. My eyes begin to flood with water. I cant hold them back anymore, I give up. Slowly I can feel every tear roll down my face and off my chin. You can see the track they left now, stained to my face, making a path for another. The bitterness of the tears leave my eyes. There is no point in wiping them away now. What's done is done, I need to except the fact that I have

When I turned 11-years-old my whole childhood began to change my life went from being perfect to everything but perfect. One day I came home to hear the news my father, my best friend; my hero was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Not knowing the struggle my family was about to take on I just began to cry. I had a million things running through my head what’s going to happen? Will everything be okay? Why him? What is going to happen? With all these things rushing through my head all I could do was cry not knowing this was least worse to come.