The Death Of The Doctor

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.

to work with Southam. According to page 130, its states, “...three young Jewish doctors refused,saying they wouldn’t conduct research on patients without their consent.” and then on page 133 Skloot says, “Hyman compared Southam’s study to Nazi research and got affidavits from the three doctors who’d resigned - they described Southam’s research using words like illegal, immoral, and deplorable.” These lines from the text reveal how the doctors felt because of what Southam was doing. Those doctors even resigned and they testified against Southam because they knew what Southam was doing was wrong and they could not stand there and be an accomplice.

It was there, I volunteered with the Health Outreach Quality Improvement Program (HOQI). At first, I questioned how an RV bus could serve so many people. After training, I was hooked! My original role as a volunteer transformed and with time I became a Site Leader, overseeing a group of 10 pre- medical students and completing reports of their performance for my 8th avenue clinic in Alachua County. I valued talking with families, most whom came from Central America and were leery about receiving treatment. Because my parents are immigrants from Jamaica, I readily identified with them. I recall my mother often attempted to use natural remedies before visiting a physician, making teas to alleviate ailments. Able to identify with their concerns, I reassured them about the services they were receiving. Later, as a volunteer in a soup kitchen, I was again able to connect with people from diverse backgrounds, especially the homeless population. Preparing meals, I saw that small efforts can have a huge effect on the lives of

The Tragic Fate of Dr. P. Verses the Miraculous Escape of Virgil: The Reasoning Behind This Conclusion.

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

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.

Each year, approximately 12.7 million people are diagnosed with cancer and unfortunately that number is not decreasing. My sister, Caitlin, was a part of that statistic 12 years ago, and to say her Ewing’s Sarcoma changed not only her life, but also my family’s would be an understatement. As a child, witnessing the deterioration of my sister’s health and the my family’s normalcy ultimately shaped me into the person I am today; a person that welcomes change with a resilient nature built on a foundation to never quit. I am blessed to say that my sister is flourishing and her cancer has been in remission and upon meeting her today, one would have no idea she ever endured such a relentless disease. Nevertheless in the past two years, my mother

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

Have you ever felt so broken and lost that you believed you simply couldn’t keep going on in life, as if the barriers of your life caved in and suffocated the very existence in which you lived? This pain was all that I knew in the months following my grandfather’s loss to cancer in July of 2008. Fighting until his dying breath, it was a moment in my life that rocked and shattered my heart like fragile glass. His death required me to adapt to and appreciate life and showed me that no obstacle is to big overcome if you maintain hope and a positive outlook.

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.

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

Some people hear about cancer through the media such as movies, television shows, maybe even newspapers. Many people don’t understand how cancer impacts individuals until they experience it themselves or by the side of a loved one. The thought of a bug inside my sister trying to take her away from my family and I was devastating to hear at a small age. I was six years old when my sister was diagnosed. My family was crying and praying, there were strings attached all over Jéna’s body, gigantic balloons and stuffed animals that keeps repeated the

When I was a child my friend, Abby, was diagnosed with leukemia. At the time, I didn’t understand how serious of a diagnosis that was, I just assumed that it was just like any other illness; she would get better. She did not get better. Abby was eight years old when she died. The memorial was a somber affair; I didn’t know how to react. We were both eight but only one of us got to be nine. I finally understood what leukemia was, a death sentence.

Cancer is a vicious killer, one that, in this case, has no cure. My family realized the truth to that statement after a few months of my mother’s chemotherapy, when she became the victim to this killer. Patricia Kay was one of the strongest people I will ever have the pleasure of knowing. Her faith made her a lighthouse for any who traveled near her and a guide for those who felt lost or without hope. Perhaps some of her faith transferred to me, and is the soil from which I have sprouted.

Many people experience moments which help define them; for me, that defining moment came through loss. Nearly four years ago, my entire world was shaken to its very foundation from the death of my mother. After many tumultuous years, my mother lost her battle with breast cancer in 2012. Though coping with her death proved to be the most challenging obstacle I would ever face, it proved to also have a silver lining. Through my adversity, I have been introduced to a community of cancer families which have provided me with endless support during my times of struggle, and to whom I have been able to comfort in their own times of need.