Chemotherapy In Margaret Edson's Wit

Wednesday, October 22 Reading Response 2 “Living Will” by Danielle Ofri is about an author who is a doctor who came across a patient that is suicidal. “They All Just Went Away” by Joyce Carol Oates is about a young lonely girl who finds herself attracted in entering abandoned house and is entranced by other peoples lives and what they left by. Although these stories are very different, I believe both the authors share a similar idea, but different outlooks, of how the main characters in each essay struggle to do the right thing. “Living Will” gives us a better perspective of what doctors today have to face with their jobs. The author, Danielle Ofri, came across a severely ill patient, Wilburn Reston, which really makes her think.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks written by Rebecca Skloot is a national bestseller and is considered one of the most engaging pieces of nonfiction literature of all time. Through her own perspective, Skloot is able to give the reader insight on the life of Henrietta Lacks, both prior and during her battle against cervical cancer. In doing so, Skloot captures the corruption of the medical professionals in the 1950s, while also giving details of her personal account with the Lacks family. Overall, Skloot retells the story of Henrietta Lacks, while also incorporating central aspects such as violation of ethics, discrimination against minorities, corruption of medical professionals, and scientific advancements

Both of these books show great determination and strength. While Poppy’s illness was not as severe as Emery’s and did not cause her nearly as much pain or suffering, she went through her own kind. Both these books deal with young women who are unfortunately diagnosed with an incurable disease or illness. Both Poppy and Emery want to make the most out of the little time they have left and achieve their goals. While the authors make Emery’s and Poppy’s point of views on the world polar opposites they both go through pain and suffering everyday to persevere and try as hard as they can to live a normal teenage life.

This happened only five years before the antibiotic that could have treated him and prevented his death came to be. In illustrating this story, she describes the event as one that “scarred his family with a grief they never recovered from.” (188) Through this story, as a reader, it is almost impossible not to imagine yourself in her shoes. That, along with the use of these very emotionally provoking words, she captures the audience from the beginning with this pathetic appeal that carries on throughout the essay. She goes on to appeal to logics as well.

According to the National Cancer Institute, about 40% of people will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life, and there were approximately 13,776,251 people living with cancer in 2012. Cancer is a common disease with many types and forms. The book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot shows the story of a woman with cervical cancer, and how her illness affected herself and her family. Although cancer affects a patient physically, it also has effects on the patient mentally and financially, as well as it challenges patients to change their lifestyles for the better.

Physicians refer to Henrietta as “patient” and repeatedly place her behind her medical issues (Skloot, 2011). The lack of person first language results in an emphasis of the disease and not the individual. “Attributing a lack of [human] traits to people is akin to explicitly or implicitly perceiving or acting toward those people as though they lack the capacity to feel” (Yang, Jin, He, Fan, & Zhu, 2015). Scientists lost sights of Henrietta Lack as a human being: a creature of the same emotional capacity of themselves. The abbreviation of Henrietta’s cells to “HeLa” further works to distance the cells from their owner – a woman with thoughts, emotions and relationships.

In her essay, "Breast Cancer No. 2," from the Readings for Writers textbook, Margaret Overton explores her experience of performing an operation on a cancer patient who has a similar background like her. The methods of development in this personal experience go to explain the emotions and thoughts Overton encountered during this specific procedure. Through the use of compare/contrast, narration, and an emphatic statement, the author is able to present her thesis, "Everyone's tolerance is different, so I titrate the drugs to the desired effect," (465) to describe her struggle on her experience of having to keep away from her emotions and remain professional during her patient's operation. Throughout her essay, Margaret Overton goes into

In the first section, he gives numerous examples of how normal his life was before the diagnosis. He recounts his childhood and his beginnings of how he loved to read because of his mother. He tells of when he would stay out late reading in the starlight to come home to his mother worried that he was doing drugs, but “the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week” (27). He continues with all of his life before cancer, but when he gets the results he says “One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing” (120). The rest of the book, the closing of his book as he calls it, focuses on examples of how cancer changed his

This quote shows that even though Mairs sometimes has difficulty accepting her illness, she knows that there is a growing acceptance of people who must deal with the difficulties that she faces. This ultimately lends a hopeful and positive tone to an otherwise serious and depressing section of her essay. This contrast in tone, but general feeling of hope is key to the type of emotions that Nancy Mairs is trying to educate her readers about. Mair is successful in using multiple rhetorical strategies to connect with the reader.

Foster develops the concept that an illness is never just an illness in How to Read Literature Like a Professor. This is evident in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God through the symbolism of the illnesses that impact Janie’s life. Foster explains that a prime literary disease “should have strong symbolic or metaphorical possibilities” (Foster 224). Hurston utilizes this concept in her novel, the characters developing illnesses that represent Janie’s freedom and independence.

The movie Wit (Bosanquet & Nichols, 2001) focuses on Dr. Vivian Bearing, an English professor who is diagnosed with an aggressive form of ovarian cancer. It chronicle’s Vivian’s experiences with her health care team up until her death. Throughout the movie her doctors, Doctor Kelekian and his fellows, most notably Jason, make many errors while treating Vivian. They communicate with Vivian in ways that make her feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable, violate ethical principles by ignoring her autonomy and not sharing critical information about her health with her, and failing to addressed her spiritual needs. Vivian’s nurse, Susie, does her best to care for Vivian.

(Gilman 445). This impactful sentence proves to the audience that when the day for the woman to leave the room came, her sickness was now in full control of her mind and she embraced it. The personification used in the short story followed the reactions of how the ill

When writing her personal essay “In Bed”, author Joan Didion intended it for an audience very familiar with migraines, however, it has the potential to be written for an audience of people just beginning to experience migraines. Didion’s use of personal anecdotes, factual information, and inspiring acceptance are all points that can be altered for this new audience. Didion begins her essay with personal accounts of her experiences with migraines, setting the stage for an introduction that relates to newcomers. She describes the suffering in which she endures during her migrains, composed of imagery that brings the reader into her situation. Where she begins with stating that she “spend[s] the day in bed with a migraine”, she could instead present this as a question to the reader.

The poet successfully illustrates the magnitude with which this disease can change its victim’s perspective about things and situations once familiar to

I found this movie interesting because I agree with what the film implied on how all patient share a commonality called vulnerability. In the movie Wit, you are allowed a peek into the medical world that shows disregard for humanity. The film revolves around an English professor, Vivian Bearing, being diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, the treatment, and how her professional status is taken away for being a patient. A major theme of this movie is dependency on others by chronicling Vivian 's trial treatment and it allows the viewers a peek into the world of a patient dying from cancer. After watching the film, I noticed that there were a lot of significant moral issues, which correlates with the nursing profession.