The Hardships for the Mother of a Child with Cancer in People Like That Are the Only People Here,” by Lorrie Moore

People deal with grief in different ways. As a small child, the way the narrator handles uncertainty and pain is distressing, yet also expected. She finds distractions in the furniture and decorations. The child notices a

This idea was blatantly ignored with the treatment of Henrietta and many others. Henrietta was a living, breathing, human being, that deserved equivalent treatment. She was instead, dehumanized into cells, her privacy invaded, and her family permanently damaged from the experience. Henrietta was not immortal. In reality, “Henrietta died at 12:15 a.m. on October 4, 1951” (86). From the unethical treatment she received to the blatant disregard for empathy with regard to her deathly illness, Henrietta was maltreated. John Moore’s case exposes the widespread nature of this problem. “It was very dehumanizing to be thought of as Mo,” claims Moore (201). “...I was Mo, I was the cell line, like a piece of meat” (201). John Moore endured the same as Henrietta. Both viewed as abstractions, their truths ignored. They both, however, hold a triumph. They contributed to the betterment of society, and helped to advance medical practices and cured countless

In the book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”, the author Rebecca Skloot introduces the reader to a painful story of Lack’s family. The main character of the book, Henrietta Lack, had survived the interplay of poverty, race and science, as well as one of the significant medical discoveries of the century. In her book, the author narrates the lucid science tackling the issue of spookiness of the cells from spiritual perspective that the family was associated with while acknowledging that their mother was immortal. In fact, the author analyses compressively the various aspects of Henrietta Lack’s life and the HeLa cells which have made her life endless. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" dwells upon an uncanny thing in the cancer cells of the cervix of Henrietta Lack.

Henrietta’s family goes through much pain through her cancer and loss. As a 20th century newspaper describes HeLa cells’ contributions as helpful to people “at a great cost,” the reporter writes, “For Mrs. Lacks and the family she left behind, it was the worst of times”(219). Skloot develops an interpretation and imagination of the “worst of times” that Henrietta’s family suffers through due to her death. Realizations occur, such as how behind remarkable scientific breakthroughs, lie tragedies for families such as the Lackses. The newspaper reporter clearly portrays the great but often unthinkable pain of sufferers when they experience a loss.

The remarkable story of Henrietta Lacks was just the beginning of successful cell culture: a process by which cells are grown in a laboratory under controlled conditions. Prior to this, researchers had attempted to cultivate human tissue in the lab, but failed. Through the pain and anguish the Lacks family experienced, a new era in the scientific world was born. As a black woman in the fifties, she had the least resources available to her in terms of medical care. When she got sick, there was only one hospital that admitted black people, and she was kept in a separate colored ward. Due to the fact that cell culture had never been successful, there were gaps in the knowledge of cancer treatment. Therefore, while the doctors thought they were curing her, they actually were killing her. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, aside from the horrific death of Henrietta and the mistreatment of her family after the fact, hones in on the relationship between Rebecca Skloot, the author, and Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah. They have their ups and downs, but nearing the end of their journey there is familiarity between the two and a steadiness that resembles mother and daughter. Skloot explores every aspect of the Lacks family and includes the sadness and hopefulness expressed by all. She also writes copiously about the scientific significance of Henrietta and her particular situation.

Brooks creates a horrific imagery that abortions are terrible; and in the poem “The Mother “,she mirrors herself to reality to show the missed opportunities of a child, that women who have aborted their children, will miss. In the poem, it pinpoints a woman’s experience of aborting a child, and then feeling guilty about it, as a mother. In contrast to the author of the poem, Gwendolyn Brooks is a woman who has also aborted a child numerous of times, feels relentless. She communicates with her audience, women, through the poem to recap what the unborn children would become in the future such as singers and workers. “You were born, you had body, you died. It is you never giggled or planned or cried.” When Brooks talk about the missed opportunities that women will never see, she refers to a mother with treacherous experiences. Symbolically, she reflects as a role model for all women who have undergone the situation.

In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Henrietta’s family has had many hard times throughout their lives. Each member of the family has had their own hardships, but they were all affected by the death of their mother. Henrietta died of cancer and her cells were taken for research which caused the family major problems years later. Each of her children struggled in their own ways after her death because of care-takers, and abusive husbands. This family has been through so much in their lifetime that no one can understand what they have felt unless they have lived through it as well.

Posters and pamphlets strewn across the walls accompany the harsh, burning stench of disinfectant. Passing the bodies of former men, and followed by the click-clack of nurses shoes, he sees him. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, every bone visible through the thin hospital gown. His love is a shell of the man he once knew, Patty is gone.

In Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Mother”, the author expresses a lot of her thoughts and feelings in order to share her experience. It is written in the first person and the narrator is adopted by the author herself, Gwendolyn Brooks, who embodies a weaken mother. In this poem, Gwendolyn Brooks tries to portray what abortion is for a woman and to describe the harsh truth about how women feel afterwards. Thus, this poem is mostly targeted to aim females and their feelings. First of all, abortion is the deliberate termination of a human pregnancy. First, the narrator uses many imageries, description, and a precise choice of words to explain this emotional topic of abortion. Second, her use

A child is usually portrayed as innocent and pure. Yamila, who is now 10, has been fighting cancer ever since she was 3 years old, when she was found to suffer from ALL. Yamila, whose family lived in Puerto Rico, underwent treatment at a local hospital. But the cancer came back. This time, her doctors recommended a bone marrow transplant and referred Yamila’s family to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. St. Jude invents more clinical trials than any other children’s hospital, which is why the world looks to St. Jude for new and better ways to treat childhood cancer. At St. Jude, Yamila underwent the bone marrow transplant, with her brother serving as her donor. “My daughter began riding her bike shortly after leaving the transplant unit,” said Yahaira, Yamila's mother. “The physical therapist would come to teach her some exercises, and all she would think about was her bike” said her mother. “St. Jude is a hospital where miracles happen,” Yamila said. Yamila portrayed a sad child’s life because after she recovered from cancer she got it

"You think because I am her mother I have a key, or that in some way you could use me as a key? She has lived for nineteen years. Over and over, we are told of the limitations on choice--"it was the only way"; "They persuaded me" and verbs of necessity recur for descriptions of both the mother's and Emily's behavior. " In such statements as "my wisdom ! came too late," the story verges on becoming an analysis of parental guilt. With the narrator, we construct an image of the mother's own development: her difficulties as a young mother alone with her daughter and barely surviving during the early years of the depression; her painful months of enforced separation from her daughter; her gradual and partial relaxation in response to a new husband and a new family as more children follow; her increasingly complex anxieties about her first child; and finally her sense of family balance which surrounds but does not quite include the early memories of herself and Emily in the grips of survival needs. In doing so she has neither trivialized nor romanticized the experience of motherhood; she has indicated the wealth of experience yet to be explored in the story’s possibilities of experiences, like motherhood, which have rarely been granted serious literary consideration. Rather she is searching for

An article for “Coping (with Cancer) Magazine” and, any former science teachers are raising their eyebrows in disbelief, but articles for Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy and Go Nuclear, Inc. I’m also working on another children’s book. The little girl I titled Tickles Tabitha after is all grown up and a talented artist. I’d like her to do the illustrations. Unfortunately, this may take a while as she received a fellowship to UNC, and has way too many internships and school related professional grad school functions to work for free for her mother.

However, as Jones stated, the severity of cancer is obvious when one realizes that there is no cure for it. This shows that although many individuals may not be able to fully understand what it means to have cancer, the fact that there is no cure should be enough for them to realize that the battle metaphor does not accurately depict the demanding challenges faced by cancer patients. Instead, it minimizes the harsh consequences of cancer and alters the reality of it, much like Bogost’s analysis of the algorithmic metaphor demonstrates how it distorts the reality of

It was early one summer afternoon, shortly after lunchtime, when I heard my mom scramble towards the door. There was little noise, besides her loud stomps and faint cries through the drywall. The wind whistled faintly through my slightly open windows. Suddenly, the air conditioning kicked in startling me. It sounded as if it was a faint boat in the distance. I could make out the sound of the air conditioning through my vents. My brother’s television powered on, as well as my dad’s. They whispered silently through the insulation. Eventually, it all turned off and once again there was my mom’s loud stomps and faint cries.

Well, not quite. She doesn’t say cancer right away. Mom and Dad don’t know all the details yet, and Mom doesn’t reveal the cancer part right away. But she tells you that Henri has to have his kidney removed. And that’s scary. It’s scary to me and I’m seven years older than you are. Your little brother has cancer. You’ll cry, right there in the car, with Henri’s friend Ava in the back seat. Mom will cry a little too. Mom will cry a lot in the next year, she’s just as strong as Henri is. You get home and Henri is in the front lawn. He got to go to Burger King for lunch, in between his tests, and he got a green dinosaur toy. He’s just sitting there, playing. Happy. Looking back on that, I know now how miraculous that is. How incredible bravery is amplified by youthful innocence. You won’t understand that, and that’s ok. There are a lot of