The Values Of Cancer : The Life Of My Life

When my dad came home that evening he sat me down and asked me if I knew what cancer was. I had an idea so I just nodded my head, he went on to tried to explain to me how bad the cancer was that my mom had been diagnosed with. Seeing my dad so afraid scared me. The fear I felt then led me to realize that I needed to try and hide it because it would only hurt my dad more to see his children so upset. I did my best to help, I tucked my little sisters into bed while my mom was away at the hospital, read them stories and did the best I could at preparing snacks to comfort them. After my mom arrived home and she recovered from the surgery she started chemotherapy. The miserable treatment that attacks the cancer also makes her very ill. Every other week she was sick. Before every bad week I wanted to cry, but that wouldn’t help anyone. Lane and Kenna already were crying, if I cried it could only hurt my parents

One fateful day at the end of June in 1998 when I was spending some time at home; my mother came to me with the bad news: my parent's best friend, Tommy, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. He had been sick for some time and we all had anxiously been awaiting a prognosis. But none of us were ready for the bumpy roads that lay ahead: testing, surgery, chemotherapy, nausea, headaches, and fatigue. Even loud music would induce vomiting. He just felt all around lousy.

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

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.

16 years old. That’s how old I was when my whole life changed. Not only did I lose a man that raised me and taught me to be the best version of myself, but I was also diagnosed with Wegener’s Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis. The beginning of my junior year was, to put it lightly, hectic. The first day I missed went by, my head pounding as I sat in a hospital room. My grandfather laid in the hospital bed and I caught word of the diagnosis. Stage Four Pancreatic Cancer. That word, “cancer”, spoke volumes within my buzzing mind. I laid my head on my Papa’s bed next to him and began to cry, keeping my face hidden because I didn’t want him to see me cry. He ran his fingers through my hair and sang a song I’d heard my whole life, “You Are My Sunshine”;

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

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 turned 11-years-old my whole childhood began to change my life went from being perfect to everything but perfect. One day I came home to hear the news my father, my best friend; my hero was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Not knowing the struggle my family was about to take on I just began to cry. I had a million things running through my head what’s going to happen? Will everything be okay? Why him? What is going to happen? With all these things rushing through my head all I could do was cry not knowing this was least worse to come.

“I have stage 3 colorectal cancer” is not something I ever expected to hear from anyone, much less my father. The day I was told by my parents that my father had cancer changed our lives forever. On Friday, February 23, 2007, we were told what to expect, but could not have known what would lie ahead. Then began the five plus hour drives to Houston, Texas to MD Anderson Cancer Center. We tried to keep things light although we were all thinking the same thing, what would happen next and where would it leave us? We told ourselves we could handle it; that he would sail through chemotherapy and surgery and be back to normal in no time. I couldn’t have anticipated that “normal” would never be an option again. Our two-year journey began with

How does it feel waking up to your body aching and going to the doctor numerous times a week all because you have cancer? How would it sound if there was a way that one could be treated just by taking pills — maybe three times a day? During my research about the wonderful cancer curing drug, I have noticed a few things. In the three articles about cancer, the main point in all of them was the fact that they all do the same thing — cure cancer in the human body. However, the only difference between the articles is that they refer to the cure as something different.

In 2010, doctors diagnosed my father with a rare form of cancer with dismal survival rates and gave him nineteen months to live. As a father of three, he wanted to be the best father he could to my siblings and I for as long as possible.

Yelling from the top of my lungs at the bottom of the staircase, demanding breakfast and the control to turn on my favorite morning cartoon, everything seemed to be normal. However, the world as I once knew it quickly took a turn for the worse. You see, being the youngest of five, I quickly learned that a quiet house isn’t a normal house. Therefore, as I huffed and puffed up the stairs, snarling because everyone was still nestled in their beds, something quickly caught my eye. My brother, Craig was on the floor rolling back and forth in agonizing pain, he was barely able to make a call for help. Suddenly, my parents were awakened from my screaming and they quickly called 9-1-1. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes turned into hours, and hours turned into days. It seemed like my family was crumbling before my eyes. Suddenly, as I began to lose hope, I looked out of my bedroom window to see my dad carrying my brother in his arms up the driveway. My heart sunk into my stomach because I always saw my brother as a strong, self-sufficient teenager who never accepted help from anyone. Eager to know what happened, my parents sat my three older siblings and myself on the couch and told us the news: Craig has Cancer. Cancer. That’s all I heard. That one word had the ability to weaken the mold that once held my family together for so many years. My family became frantic and then gradually we began to forget how

“There is no better exercise for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”- John Holmes. There is no better feeling than knowing that you helped someone else. Especially when you could have saved their life. Cancer has killed tons of people all over the world. Many people support cancer research or the patients. Different people have different reasons for supporting cancer. Three charities that support cancer in different ways are Beads of Courage, American Cancer Society and the Cancer Research Institute. If I raise money for these charities it could make a difference in the world.

It’s a calm afternoon. Birds chirping, with a light breeze blowing. Basketball is on in the background; it’s March, after all. Seemingly this was like any other day, but in a few minutes it would quickly become one that changed my life. I’m upstairs in my room, running through my agenda for what would soon be due on Monday. Before long, a familiar voice hits my ears. “Jake, can you come meet me in the living room?” my Dad yells upstairs. As I arrive, I notice the entire family has congregated. The feeling in the room is rather tense, and I know at this point that something’s wrong. As soon as I sit down, my Dad utters four words that would shake me to my core: “Jake, I have cancer.”

up and followed my daily routine: brush my teeth, put on my clothes, and went to school. Little did I know, that would be the day that changed everything. I found out that my uncle Danny had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The chemo originally worked and he went into remission. After a few months of remission, the doctors said he would have a few months to live. After he passed away, I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't see him anymore. He was just gone. Cancer ended the life of someone very precious to me and his death sparked the beginning of my desire to battle this disease.