Less than one year after the surgery, I was back on crutches and in terrible pain. I had developed stress fractures in several places along my femur. For nearly one year I walked only when it was necessary and ate painkillers as though they were candy. Finally, my doctors decided to try something new. On March 9, 1999, my doctors took a rib bone, donated from a cadaver, split it in half, and wired it around my broken femur.
Let's just say since that day on, my life changed in a way never expected. Two weeks after the hospital trip my mom and dad sat down at a table with me and had one of those "talks". Not the normal ones, the ones only us, special cancer kids get to hear. Basically what my treatment options are, what even is kidney cancer, and whether or not I still want to go to my school. All of the questions were ones I really didn't even want to think about.
"Yesterday I could run twenty three miles and now I can’t cross the street." Terry said. Terry’s mother cried as Terry spoke to the reporters "Well, you know, I had primarily cancer is in my lungs and I have to go home." His voice broke as he spoke. But he continued "and have some more x-rays or maybe an operation that will involving opening my chest or more drugs I’ll do everything I can. I’m gonna do my best. I’ll fight.
I studied well, stayed among the best students in my class and enjoyed every single aspect of my life at medical school. On the last day of my 4th year in medical school, I received a call from my brother that my one year old nephew had lost consciousness after severe vomiting and dehydration. They rushed him to a nearby hospital and by the time I had arrived, he was already comatosed. The tears in the eyes of my brother and the rest of my family were difficult to bear. He was initially diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis and did not regain consciousness for a week and when he did, he had sustained severe cerebral insult.
She and the doctors decided on a date to do the open surgery. The day of the surgery my brother and I had to be in school, we sat there for several hours hoping and praying that the doctors would find something and fix it. When school was over my step dad took us to the hospital to see our mother. The doctors came in shortly with the results from her surgery. It turns out my mother had scar tissue in her gastric region.
Rebecca Perl, from Maryland, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1995. Rebecca has a two year old son and she is a health science reporter. Her body has not responded to the last six months of radiation and chemotherapy. Rebecca and her husband Tom are going to Omaha, Nebraska. At the University of Nebraska Medical Center Rebecca will receive a bone marrow transplant and a round of chemotherapy(Perl,1995).
(Lyman et al, 2011) The family was having a tough time deciding due to the fact that the doctors could sustain Marthe’s life if they requested it. Marthe ended up being taken off the ventilator and to everyone’s surprise was able to breathe but, a day later she could no longer do so and now she has been on life support for a year. (Lyman et al, 2011) Another patient that I took particular interest in was John Moloney a 53 year old multiple myeloma patient who has tried every form of treatment with no success. (Lyman et al, 2011) Despite trying everything he still wanted treatment so he could live and go home with his family but ended up in
My grandmother first got sick in November of 2014. She got diagnosed with lung cancer. The doctors said they caught it early, but they could not surgically remove it so she had to take chemo and radiation.
“I was so bitter and cynical,” Joy T. said. “I thought there was no point of going to school if I could just die tomorrow.” Steindorf, O’Daniell, and Joy T. didn’t realize their psychological distress was related to their cancer experience — they had survived, after a... ... middle of paper ... ... “The first session she asked, ‘This is the first time you’re coming to therapy?’” Joy T. said. “She told me [my anxiety] was totally normal — I got to talk about a lot of things.” Several years after she dropped out of high school, Joy T. earned her GED. She recently completed her bachelor’s degree in science and healthcare leadership. Steindorf opted not to see a therapist — instead she takes an anti-depressant and leans on her family for support.
With family support, she went through intense chemotherapy treatment, where she responded positively, and was cancer free for four years. But during a regular screening last year, the doctors found another cancerous tumor affecting her left side breast. For all of us as a family, the news was a shock, because we all thought that it will not re-occur again. She started the fighting journey again, and until this date she is going through treatment, and with our support we hope that she defeats this illness. This experience I went through made me question the effectiveness of chemotherapy used to treat cancer, the pharmacology of the drugs used, and how we ca... ... middle of paper ... ...alysis methods.