Informative Speech About Cancer

It’s beyond a battle to make the best of my life with chronic illness. “Life is just not fair.” I am not always able to make plans because I don’t know if I will be able to follow through. I don’t know what the future holds because I have to take life as it comes. I can only be hopeful, and I am.

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.

Although the patients were all in the same stage physically, their mental status greatly differed between each of them. One of the most influential patients was, Jeff. He approached death differently than the other patients; he wasn’t scared or worried, but happy with the live he lived. He didn’t want to pursue any extra unnecessary treatment that would have decreased his quality of life. Sometimes people get so caught up in the treatment and searching for miracles that they forget how painful the side effects of treatment can be and how the pain can shorten their life.

This essay appeals to the reader 's emotions, especially if the reader has cancer, or has someone close to them in their life who is battling cancer. I thought the author’s attitude was appropriate when discussing her life, and she presented her claim in a unique way. She put a new view into the reader’s mind of how to cope with cancer, and how to become a new person because of your disease. She concludes the memoir stating how she is bald again, and dreams of having her long, wavy hair back, but for now she will focus on her new hair tattoo. I think this is a perfect representation of how to cope with cancer, and how to transform into a new person for the better because of

For every one hundred thousand men, approximately thirty-six thousand and nine hundred will be diagnosed with some form of cancer and two hundred and eight of those cases will be completely fatal (National Cancer Institute). The statistics of cancer to many are terrifying, especially those affected in some way. Reactions vary from person to person when presented with such a murderer 's disease, whether they themselves are suffering or someone they care about is suffering. Many ideas are shared about cancer and much research is done but in simplicity, cancer is “any evil condition or thing that spreads destructively” (Dictionary.com). Although it is not only the sufferers of the disease suffering horribly but the loved ones in their lives too,

More and more people have cancer these days. It is almost like the plague that no one wants to talk about, and it keeps getting worse.

Imagine a close family member finding out they have cancer. Most people would be devastated, but my mom concurred through it and continued to brighten everyone’s day, D. Thesis- Even through her journey of cancer, my mom kept a smile on her face and continued to inspire people. E. Preview of Main Points- Cancer not only made my mom realize how lucky she was, but it also pushed her to become a better person.

I: Cancer as well as other terminal illnesses cause a nation-wide problem of grief, sickness, and death. Main Pt. II: Make-A-Wish America combats the problem of cancer as well as terminal illnesses by being a beam of light and hope to children battling for their lives against sickness.

Maintaining hope is key for long-term survivors of diseases such as HIV infection and breast cancer. Healthy coping, however, differs from the common societal notion of “positive thinking.” Having the capacity to tolerate and express concerns and emotions not just the ability to put anxieties aside, and additionally, discussing these as well as uncertainties and fears, losses and sadness that usually accompany severe illness is generally

I only began to understand the concept of an individual being terminally ill when my grandmother went into the hospital. I placed my hand inside of hers and stared at her emotionless face. I could only imagine the pain running through her body and the agony of not being able to vocalize a response to my ‘I love you’. Day after day she waited only anticipating her death and the pain she would feel if indeed she woke up the next day. I would have done anything to not have to see her go through the pain, and to allow her to get to her fate quicker and more comfortably.

Can you imagine going through long battle with a disease only to be told that you have only 6 more months to live. All of these thoughts and questions start running through your head and you feel like you’re dreaming or having some sort of out of body experience. Being diagnosed with a terminal illness is unimaginable, emotional and physically trying. Cancer is the number one leading cause of terminal death in the United States, to put that into a better perspective one out of every four deaths is cancer related. That’s about 564,000 deaths annually and 1,500 deaths per day.

The author of the story introduces a young girl named Rachel who was diagnosed with Leukemia, a cancer of the blood. She immediately starts chemotherapy in hopes of surviving this deadly disease but is soon faced with the harsh reality that she will soon die. Rachel made the hard choice to stop treatment and let her body run its course. “By the way, when someone stops cancer treatment and you point out that this is a decision to die, everyone freaks out at you”(Andrews 244). Rachel’s choice to allow death is a choice that the audience can’t begin to understand.

Psychosocial Advances in Oncology Research and Practice In the 1800’s, a cancer diagnosis was viewed as the equivalent of death (Holland, 2002). In this day and age, there was no known cause or cure, and it was considered inhumane to reveal the diagnosis to the patient. In a constantly changing and advancing society, this ideology was transformed as the result of an accumulation of technological advances, education, and research initiative. This led to the acceptance of the notion of cancer worldwide.

Patients must continuously adjust to the threat to their own identity: at first, when they find out the diagnosis, and later, to the treatment, to various physical symptoms and to the emotional distress. This adjustment is considered by the Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation, where the patient with cancer is considered to be actively seeking and processing the information about the disease, building his/her own cognitive and emotional representations with regard to the disease and finally selecting and applying those coping procedures that will help him/her face the threat of disease [14,15]. If the adjustment efforts that focus on the problem or on the emotion are inadequate or inappropriate, individuals will experience fear or worry, according to Leventhal’s Common Sense Model of Self-Regulation, which originally did not include worry and risk perception; these concepts were later included in the extended versions of the self-regulation framework

I watched my mother fade away slowly as she was battling pancreatic cancer. I looked after her everyday as best as I could; however, the feeling of my eventual solitude was unbearable. The thought of my mother’s imminent demise made me feel like my heart was being continuously stabbed. Watching my mother suffer was one of the hardest things I have ever had to go through. After her passing; something changed in me, darkness filled where love once was.