Symptoms And Treatment Of Drug Resistant Viruses

I chose to write an essay about the “Topic of Cancer” by Christopher Hitchens. In this short autobiographical essay, Hitchens discusses his experience with Esophageal cancer. Just one day after lanching his book “Hitch-22” Hitchens was made aware of his illness, where he later describes the news as “taking me from the country of well, to the stark frontier.” It was then he chose to write about his experience for the purpose of documenting the changes that he, and his body were about to go through with chemotherapy, and also for the purpose of contemplating his current situation. The reason that I chose this story is because of my own personal experiences that I have had with many loved ones in my life. There is one case in particular that stands out in my memory, among the rest. It was when my friend of many years discovered that he had a very rare form of brain cancer. Soon after undergoing chemotherapy, he lost his battle. There are many people that believe chemotherapy at any stage is the best, and often times, the only way to cure cancer, yet others claim that chemotherapy is not the answer at all. A close analysis of recent statistics can settle this debate.

Kicker, a 3 year-old boy, who has never been to a doctor, never received any type of shot or poke, eaten a clean, nutrient dense diet throughout his short three years and never had anything toxic on his skin, was sitting in the cold hospital room waiting for news of a diagnosis. Nurses came in and out of the waiting room, bringing in needles, advice, paperwork and machines. All of which were intimidating to a 3 year-old and his mother, Season, who happened to be a holistic nutritionist. A nurse came into the waiting room and informed Season that an Oncologist needed to speak with her. At that moment, Season began holding her jaw tight to fight back the tears knowing that Oncologist specialized in cancer.

Terminally ill patients sometimes have misinterpreted life expectancies or even experience unexpected healing. Sharyn MacKay, a forty-six year old diagnosed with a kidney tumor, was told the cancer had spread and was incurable. Her doctors believed that chemotherapy would only add a few weeks to her life. However, MacKay strongly believed that she could win her battle against cancer. Three months later, after prayer and determination, her tumor had disappeared.

Andy was embarking on his second semester of his junior year in college. After a long bout with a cold and the sudden emergence of a protruding mass on his chest, he knew something was not right. Within a week, he received devastating news - a diagnosis of an aggressive form of bone cancer. The treatment regiment included two years of chemotherapy and radiation. The extensiveness of his cancer made surgical treatment impossible. After just his first dose of chemotherapy, he became septic and spent six weeks in an intensive care unit followed by weeks of rehabilitation. Although he had been optimistic about continuing to attend classes and staying involved with campus organizations throughout the treatment course, a disabled immune system and countless days in the hospital prevented this. His friends and peers became distant because his appearance and prognosis made them uncomfortable and speechless. He eventually relied on his mother and closest friends to take him to appointments because of increasing weakness and chronic pain. When his world was virtually turned upside down and he eventually lost much of his independence, Andy started to display symptoms of major depressive disorder.

Nearly 14.5 million Americans have had a history stint with some type of cancer and were still alive on January 1, 2014(American Cancer Society, 2016). There will be an estimated 1,685,210 new cancer cases and 595, 590 deaths in 2016 attibuted to caner in the U.S. (American Cancer Society,2016 ) Those astonishing numbers do not even account for the cancer patients family and friends whose lives are also affected this horrific disease. In order to get a glimpse of what a cancer patient has to go though, I decided to read Stuart Scott’s memoir, Every Day I Fight, by Larry Platt. He is an ESPN anchor that was diagnosed with a rare form of Appendiceal Cancer. It was a great book, and wanted to discuss the merits this book had on showing what

One of those patients is Kelly, an extremely proud father and grandfather. Kelly had been hospitalized after contracting the norovirus, but even though he felt horrible, he thought he was healthy and would recover after some rest. He was, after all, only 44. You can imagine his shock when a tumor on his liver was discovered by accident through a routine x-ray. Kelly was referred to Virginia Mason’s Cancer Institute, which provides patients with

It was a typical day in the McDougal household; my sister was acclimating to college life, my annoying little brother was pushing my buttons, and my only worry was whether I was going to pass my next bio test. My dad was getting ready for a business trip to Singapore but decided to stop by the doctors for a quick checkup for his abdomen. Scans came back showing that the bump on his belly button was metastasized Stage IV Liver Cancer. I was completely devastated and couldn’t comprehend how my role model could have so much chaos inside of him. It took weeks before I could go a day without crying as I thought about my future without one of my biggest supporters. It seems for every glimmer of hope for a new treatment, a new, insurmountable brick wall appears when the scans show the treatment’s failure. As cliché as it sounds, every day truly is a rollercoaster; some days better than others. However, we slowly have adapted to this new reality and have truly understood that falling down is a part of life, but getting back up is living.

Summer of 2012, my grandfather was diagnosed with stage four Glioblastoma, and given only one year left to live. He had gone to have surgery earlier that week for the removal of his progressive tumor; his condition began to grow worse. The doctors got the tumor on the first try, but it was going to be a while before my grandfather felt back to normal. My family had many more trails and hardships to face in the near future.

It took the doctors five months to find my dad’s real diagnostic. He had many doctor appointments, but he still went to work, and my family and I had to keep on living. After school one day, my mom told me my dad needed major surgery on his pancreas. I was very demented because I guess I really did not understand his situation. I thought he would need just a little chemotherapy and he would get superior from there, however I was wrong.

For six months you are forced to watch your once energetic and full of life father become completely bedridden as the massive doses of chemotherapy used during his bone marrow transplant destroy his liver and kidneys. The bone marrow transplant has technically been successful, but the graft-versus-host disease has set in, and his intestines are bleeding. The only way to combat the graft-versus-host disease is to give him major doses of steroids. The large doses of steroids have caused all his major mussels to waste away, and the once active man who was the backbone of the family becomes completely bedridden and hollow shell of the man he once was. Months of this treatment go by with no change in his condition and doctors finally tell him that he will die no matter what treatments they provide. The hospital staff remove his IV medications, oxygen, and start comfort care. He has weeks to live, and nothing can be done to spare the family of the further grief and torture of watching him slowly waste away. The father takes matters into his own hands and stops eating and drinking, within days he passes

His friend said he had nothing to worry about, most likely it was just a fatty tumor. As days went on he grew more and more exhausted and was not acting himself. After deciding to look into another doctor he found out the news, terminal stage 4 lung cancer had filled his whole chest cavity. The doctors seemed urgent and wanted to get a biopsy to look into the tumor more closely. He was rushed to the Lutheran Hospital in Fort Wayne and they told him immediately that the outcome was not going to be a positive one. With that news the whole family was crushed. Questions began to fill all of our heads. “How did this happen?” “What could I have done to prevent this?” These were all questions that we had, but couldn’t be

A norm has been broken and has effected my family. My grandpa, Lewis Wayne, passed away October 11, 2016 at the age of 89. His death had caused many of broken norms throughout his life and even toward his last days that my family had grown so use to seeing. My grandpa was a great, hard working man that could never fail to make you laugh. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with skin cancer in October of 2014. As a family we chose for him to receive radiation/chemo and fight the cancer. He began chemo in February 2015. During his rounds of treatment, there had been shown an amount of reduction. Later in the year of 2015, they had found that the cancer came back and even grew, so he began radiation for 5 days a week for 5 weeks total.

When I was a kid, I always wondered why it took so long for an ill person to become well again. I always thought that if the ill person went to the doctor they would be back to normal the next day, but that’s not the case. For some people it took several days, weeks, months, and even years to conquer an illness but as a child I never could understand that. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked my mom or dad how come the doctors don’t get together and make a “miracle” drug that could heal anything and everything. It wasn’t until the age of 15 when my grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer that I understood why it took so long for others to heal and the process that they had to endure in order to be healthy again. Shortly after my grandmother’s diagnosis, I started looking into what it would take to get a drug that would cure cancer through the approval process on the shelf to save some many others just like my grandmother. But I kept running into a dead end. Everything seemed to keep pointing towards chemotherapy and radiation. Although I wanted something to heal my grandmother fast, chemotherapy and radiation was the only solution if I had wish to see her watch me graduate high school. I went to almost every appointment with her to watch how it helped strengthen but also watch as it drained her energy. A month of chemotherapy and a few weeks of radiation and my

How does antimicrobial resistance happen? There are millions of viruses thought-out the world and many of them are deadly, take the Influenza virus for instance. The Influenza strain is a constantly changing virus; they change from year to year, and as the flu virus reproduces their genetic makeup may change. Due to the genetic makeup changes in Influenza it can become resistant to the antiviral drugs that are used to prevent or treat the virus.

One of the many of the world's problems is sickness, but some diseases have no cure which can result in death. Cancer is a code we just can’t seem to crack and it has taken hundreds of thousands of lives. Everyone knows of someone who has died of or had cancer in their life. It’s a hard sickness to beat but many strong people do beat it, some being children. I have personally seen my family members go through this and of course, some didn’t make it out alive. If you have seen anyone who has cancer, you’ll see how it can take over your body, how that person doesn’t even look like themselves anymore.