Plain And Simple, Cancer Sucks ! It Is A Family Disease

It’s astonishing how one diagnosis can completely alter the life of a family. One day you’re looking to move into the fancy houses along the coast, and the next you’re forced to consider if you would be able to afford the same home with one income. When I was three years old my mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer. I was too young to know what was happening, but at the age of seven, when my mom was diagnosed for the second time, I began to notice a change in my family’s daily life. I was told not to sit on my mom’s lap and that she could not play with me as much as usual due to her Chemotherapy, but it was not until her third time contracting cancer that I noticed the pain she was in. I was fourteen when I finally learned about the very thing I had been trying to figure out for nearly my entire life. This burden has solely shaped the way I act and how I handle life’s many challenges, but how it accomplished this was not always a joyous experience.

Cancer is a frightening topic, the National Cancer Institute states that “more women in America have died of [cancer] in the last two decades [than in WW1 and WW2 combined]”. It’s no wonder the word alone can bring anguish to many, there is still much we don’t understand about cancer. It wasn’t until recently that we began to noticed a trend of disease in my family. My grandmother Olga Losoya Suarez passed away in August of 2015 to colon cancer at the age of 75. As one can imagine this was devastating as she was the center of the family, always bringing everyone together on the holidays. Soon disaster struck again as my grandmother on my father’s side, Carolina Tovar, passed from pancreatic cancer in June of 2016 at the age of 71. Although most of the family felt a mixture of emotions, one that dominated the rest was concern. My parents, Aunts, and Uncles concerned that cancer was becoming more prominent in our family sought checkups from their doctors. My Aunt Linda informed

People tend to usually tremble when hearing the unpleasant word “Cancer”. Imagine being the one diagnosed with this horrible illness. More and more people in today’s society are struck with certain health issues such as diabetes, obesity, heart diseases and many more. Cancer is the at the top of this horrible chain of problems. Based on my experiences, someone that is diagnosed with cancer, does not realize how life can change so rapidly for them. Their whole lifestyle changes and they have a different outlook on life. Not until a person experiences a family member going through cancer, is he/she able to understand how important spending time with family really is.

‘“Cancer is like a home invasion, once it has invaded your life you will never feel safe again”’ (Adal yn's... 6). Cancer wipes out what a family knew before cancer; it wipes out their version of normal and replaces it with something that can not be controlled. When childhood cancer takes a hold of the family and never lets go. While going through cancer, it is important that a family sticks together and builds each other up through this difficult time. Childhood cancer affects everyone it comes in contact with, but it mainly affects the family, including the child suffering from cancer, as well as the parents or caregiver and siblings.

The Lawler family has a history with a specific type of cancer, Breast cancer. When Deb was in high school, she watched her mother fight through breast cancer and Deb’s grandmother died from breast cancer before she was born. Her uncle Bob was just diagnosed with breast cancer before his 50th birthday, and her cousin Katherine was diagnosed with the cancer when she was 33. Now that Deb is 33 years old, she has been wanting to know her chances of being diagnosed. When Deb had first brought up the idea about getting tested, her family was split on advice for her. Deb’s father encouraged her and her siblings to be tested, but her brother John really did not know how to feel about the testing, her sister was undecided about how she felt, but thought that her results could have benefits for her children in the future. Her mother was silent when the topic came up in conversation, and Deb’s cousin Lynn, refused to even discuss the subject. Deb’s Aunt Sue, was vocal about her opinion and was very

Cancer has one of the biggest effects on the patients mental health but also the patients loved ones and friends. It is one of the hardest things to get a grip on when the doctor tells someone that they have cancer and a fifty-fifty chance of making it. "The disease can bring many changes-in what people do and how they look, in how they feel and what they value" (Dakota 4). It makes people look at the world and their lives in a different way, valuing now what they took for granted and seeing the bigger picture in every scenario. It is something that no one can actually brace, even after the doctor tells them. Through it all though, the person must remain strong and optimistic because the cancer can affect the person's moods and in return affect the outcome of the person and the chances of their making it

Being diagnosed with cancer can be very scared because the person that is been diagnosed is not prepared to receive the tremendous news. When Henrietta find out that she had cervical cancer, she did not tell anyone and went on with her day as if nothing had happened. Rebecca Skloot states that Henrietta told “Day and the children not to worry,” “A int’ nothing serious wrong, she said““Doctor’s gonna fix me right up” (Skloot 31). In the article “Keeping Cancer a Secret” author Dr. Mikkael Sekeres ask his patient “how are they [children] dealing with your diagnosis” (1). The reason he chose to not tell was that this son was away in duty on

My mom had to take my uncle Raymond to radiation every day for about 3 months, now she has to take him every three months, which affected her daily routine and how she planned her day. She also takes care of him a lot although he isn’t in the hospital or anything he isn’t very ill yet but from what I know I’m sure he will get sick. My uncle David was in his home when he passed away because he was on hospice, this effected everyone who lived in the house. When my uncle David passed away it was a very emotional time for the whole family, however it was kind of a happy moment as well because we knew he wasn’t suffering any more. My uncle David saw all his brothers and sisters before he passed some say that he was waiting to see them all before he said goodbye which could be true. Every person in a family who loses a family member has to deal with the emotional state of each other, some family members can handle death better than others so they are the strong ones in the situation. Cancer effects the whole family not just the patient.

Mr. D. H. has a fascinating memory about his childhood, although he doesn’t remember his time as a toddler. One of the very first statements he made to me about his childhood was, “When I grew up, life as a child was a whole lot different than it is now” (D.H., personal communication, September 26, 2016). He was born in Troy, Ohio but the majority of his family stayed in Cleveland, including his grandmother, his aunt and uncle. Mr. H. began to reminiscence about a trip my uncle had taken him on, a couple years ago, “My son took me back to Troy and we found the house I use to live in. It looked so big when I was a kid, running down the big hills and the yard and stuff, but when I went there wasn’t no big hill

Battling cancer is an everyday struggle and risks of dying, are risks taken everyday for some people, unfortunately. Brittany Maynard of Oregon suffered brain cancer, and chose to end her life. As well as a teenage girl, Cassandra, who did not want to undergo chemotherapy. I believe that refusing to fight cancer should not be your choice, I believe that you should fight and completely faithful.

This past summer, I, along with my mother and father, travelled to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. My mom had been invited to participate in the St. Jude For Life Study because when she was around six to eight years old, she had a form of leukemia called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. This particular study is to help all present and future St. Jude patients and help to research for a cure. While there, I saw first-hand how cancer can affect a family. You can just see all of the stress, the worry, the exhaustion, the tiredness, the fear, and the tears on the families’ and the patients’ faces.

Since she got sick she had to pullback socially and physically. Most cancer patients loose that. There’s never really fully a chance to connect to people when you’re stuck in a hospital most of the time and their rest of the time you spend at home still hooked up to machines. Cancer requires you to grow mentally. They can’t be the angry kid who has a negative outlook on life, which is normally how they end up. They begin to wonder why this awful thing had to happen to them. They get angry at everyone and everything because life just had to go pick this out of everything that could’ve happened. They get snappy because constantly being hooked up to machines all the time and seemingly never ending pain can do that to

You never think it would affect you, you never think that a life threatening disease will wipe away all of your families strength and emotion. Terminal cancer is not news that a family would like to hear. Getting the news that lung cancer had engulfed your Uncles limp body is heartbreaking. With finding stage 4 cancer already taking up his whole lung cavity we knew the outcome wouldn’t be good. Rick Nafizger is a father of 4 boys, young boys. Trayton who is 19, Trevyn 16, and then Jayden and Jackson 14. Rick is a very involved and hardworking father and has always stepped up to the plate with all the work around the house. Either yard work or bailing hay he was always outside.

Breast cancer is one of the most common cancers among the world. Cancer affects almost every family in the United States and if it hasn’t then you should consider yourself lucky! I know that this terrible disease has affected my family tremendously. When I say that it has affected my family, I mean that it tore our world apart! Breast Cancer is something that I hold dear to my heart and will almost always be involved with in some way, shape, or form.

When Susan was first diagnosed with lung cancer no one understood why. She wasn’t a smoker or user of tobacco. The only connection to lung cancer was her family’s history. Susan’s father died of lung cancer at 55 years old. Susan was seven years old when she lost her father. She couldn’t imagine putting Jessica in the same position she was in as a little girl. Up until her own diagnosis, Susan felt losing a parent was the most traumatic event to happened in her life.