Personal Narrative: Pancreatic Cancer

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

Ever since I was a kid, I have always been active. I fell into a deep depression and gained very few people knew about and gained

As an eight-year-old in the fourth grade, I had yet to develop an understanding of the world. I believed every family had two parents. I believed all children lived in houses and attended school. And I believed a variety of other utopian and idealistic situations to be reality. Media, adults, and other influences lead me to believe that the only thing I had to worry about were my birthday gifts. This false pretense was clearly contradicted when I was presented with the news that my father had cancer. It was a weekend in the fall, and I was playing with various toys and games. My mother shouted down to the basement that we were having a family meeting. Although this did not inspire me, I eventually stumbled up the steps and staggered into the living room. In the room, I joined my brother, sister, and parents. As a took a seat, I readied myself for the

Continually, my father would come home from work weaker and disable sometimes he could barely stand up. He started getting blurry purple spots on him and that's when I figured something wasn't the same about my father. He used to always carry himself with energy and laughter but, now he couldn’t get out of bed. We took him to the hospital and they told us he had stage 2 cancer. This experience has not only changed me as a person but changed the way I had to live for a while. When my father had to be on around the clock care at the hospital me and my older sister had to help out around the house. While most 4th graders were outside playing with their friends, I was inside everyday helping my mom cook, clean, and feed the dogs. I had to step up a lot and do more thing that i'm not used to because my dad wasn't around to help us out. We would go up to the hospital about every other night and stay up there and spend the night watching over my dad at night. My dad’s cancer taught me that life is too short to be wasting my time on the little things that aren't even important! I’ve realized l I need to make every minute and every moment

“The doctors told me that there’s nothing more to do and I have months to live,” said Randy Pausch, a man diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Mr. Pausch presented his Last Lecture (wisdom about life and the world) on the Oprah Show. In this text, I will be discussing my First Lecture at 14 years old.

One of the most difficult things I’ve ever experienced has been my battle with cancer. When I was 21 I was preparing to submit my mission papers. What was supposed to be a simple physical exam, turned into an unexpected battle. In October 31, 2013 my doctors diagnosed me with papillary cancer. I had surgery, and a couple weeks after had radiation treatment. Months later I was told I was cancer free, and I received my mission call. I was assigned to serve in the Colorado Denver South Mission. Unfortunately a week after I got my mission call, I was told that my cancer was back, and had actually spread to my lymph nodes; its next target would be my lungs, thus making my goal to serve a mission seem further from my reach. I went through the process

Over the past decade, many of my family members have been in and out of the hospital. My late maternal grandmother frequented Stanford Cancer Center for chemotherapy to treat her stage four pancreatic cancer, which ultimately took her life away in 2008. My maternal grandfather received ablation procedures for his arrhythmia and then later for his pericardial effusion in an international hospital. My aunt was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2010 and underwent rounds after rounds of radiation and chemotherapy at the UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center, and finally, my great-aunt was saved in Mills-Peninsula Hospital from a stroke in 2014 that paralyzed the left side of her body. However, what does this all mean?

In 2012 my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, for the following year and a half I watched my mother undergo multiple surgeries, daily radiation, and a variety of other intensive treatments. Throughout the entire process I watched my mother physically and mentally deteriorate. At the time my knowledge of the disease was minimal and not only was I fearful of my mothers future, but I was also unaware of the physiological functions that would overcome my mothers body eternally. Following a year and a half of agonizing and aggressive treatments my family received the news that my mother was officially in complete remission. Throughout my mothers battle with breast cancer my family and I met countless individuals who were

Pancreatic cancer may arise from the exocrine or the endocrine cells of the pancreas and disrupt any of their functions.

I struggled a lot in doing my role as a mother to my children ….a daughter to my parents …a friend to those around me. Sometimes I had to stay with my mother at the hospital when she was getting sick while I was suffering from the chemo’s side effect (Sahara).

In 1970, Gey learns that he has pancreatic cancer, and decides to volunteer as a subject in medical research and him under experimental chemo treatments that nearly killed him. Although Gey had the guts to do that I personally would not volunteer to serve as a subject in medical research, as Gey did because those treatments could have killed me like they nearly did to him. But before he died, he informed Mary that it was okay to release Henrietta's real name. It was later informed by Howard Jones that Henrietta's tumor was invasive and not an epidemic carcinoma, he realized that her cancer was "misinterpreted" and "mislabeled" (Skloot 172). Adenocarcinoma arises from glandular cells within the tissue, whereas squamous cell arises from the epithelial

My unexpected transition from childhood to adulthood occurred in 2011 when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. For the next few months, my family and I would constantly travel for about one hundred miles to the treatment center. My mom had to have several surgeries. I watched as the energetic, vibrant woman I had known all my life slowly became more ill and exhausted by each month’s end. Eventually, the inevitable came, the big decision. My mother was given the choice to either undergo radiation and chemotherapy or have a double mastectomy. It took a great deal of discussion and prayer before it was decided that my mother would have a double mastectomy as well as reconstructive surgery.

A little over 2 years ago both my mother and my mother in law were diagnosed with cancer. Not that long after my brother, who for the last 13 years has had serious mental health issues, had a bad spell of depression and paranoid delusions. All this into a state of discomfort and high levels of anxiety which led me to go into counselling. During this process, I first realised that what I needed wasn't being able to deal with these big events, but that the impact they were having was because of other, more deep-seated issues. Then over time, I learnt that these other underlying issues were not things that needed fixed or made to go away. Once I understood this I was able to have greater clarity of thought and more purposeful, focused introspection.

In the year 1999, my father’s mother, Alice Louise Jackson, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer destroys the body’s endocrine glands which secrete hormones. Life without a pancreas is impossible. My grandmother’s illness did not stop her from living her life. My parents tell me she devoted all of her time and energy to her family. In her final days, she spent endless hours showing her love and affection to my family and me. Alice hosted many family dinners and game nights to occupy her mind. In 2000, one year after being diagnosed with cancer, my grandmother lost her

When asked to recall the biggest turning points in my life, my immediate thoughts unfortunately go to the death of my grandmother and of my best friend’s mother. Although these were completely unrelated events, they have one factor in common, cancer. The dreaded disease has been wrecking havoc on the lives of many, as there are over a million new cases diagnosed each year. The increase of cancer is due to new screening, new diagnostic tests, and an increase in exposure to carcinogens. It seems every individual has been affected by cancer in some way, whether it was personal or through friends and family.