Tag: cancer

Upon discovering that her mother had been a member of the group Women Strike For Peace (WSP), Heidi Hutner becomes obsessed with feminist nuclear history.

“As medicine advances, we have more survivors. But those survivors carry trauma to their graves.”

Friends don’t let friends lie about having cancer.

Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.

“Drink was destroying my life. Tobacco only shortens it, with the best parts over anyway.”

After enormous lobbying efforts, Monsanto’s GMO soybeans, treated with Roundup, became the country’s largest export, as cancer rates and other health issues skyrocketed.

Dipti S. Barot pays homage to the two irreplaceable voices who informed her love of good movies.

Diagnosed with breast cancer, Anne Boyer discusses the treatment that is poisoning her body.

Cameron Dezen Hammon reflects on her frustrations as a Christian music minister for the terminally ill, unable to heal a cancer patient she cared for, and struggling to be compassionate at her belligerent Jewish father’s bedside.

Anne Boyer encounters a familiar system — that grand and easy-to-mistake-for-everything system — at the cancer pavilion.

Leigh Hopkins faces the hidden truth about the world’s most famous spiritual surgeon and the irresistible desire to find ‘the cure.’

A daughter recounts her family’s worst day, through her mother’s eyes.

Actor and writer Rob Delaney shares his family’s experience with every parent’s nightmare: a very sick child.

Mary Wang recalls the ways in which she and her family in China conspired to hide her grandmother’s cancer diagnosis from her.

Nell Boeschenstein reflects on the culturally fraught discourse around post-mastectomy reconstruction.

As she lives with terminal cancer, Teva Harrison reflects on how fentanyl is helping her make the most of the time she has left.

Cancer may have claimed Steve Bean Levy’s nose, but not his sense of humor.

A reporter’s North Carolina hometown water supply contaminated millions of people, including her mother and two of her now-deceased brothers.

Privatkliniken in Deutschland verkaufen Krebspatienten Hoffnung zu Höchstpreisen — mit durchwachsenem Erfolg.

Private clinics in Germany sell cancer patients hope — and mixed results — at exorbitant prices. Some, like the Hallwang Clinic, cater primarily to foreigners.

Ken Otterbourg contemplates love and loss and what we remember when we try to forget.

Jacqueline Dooley recalls her difficult transition from being a mother with earthly duties, to becoming one with more spiritual concerns for a teenage daughter with terminal cancer.

To help demystify dying, Cory Taylor answers questions about what it’s like to have a terminal illness.

James Vlahos gave his father eternal life using a little bit of programming.

Gabriele Grunewald’s rare cancer has returned, but the athlete keeps fighting.

In searching for meaning behind a random encounter and his mother’s death, Josh Roiland explores compassion.

Christina Frangou writes on the aftermath of being widowed at age 36.

The first recorded cases of cancer show how the Ancient Egyptians used cauterisation (using red-hot instruments to burn off tissue and seal off wounds) to destroy tumours and to treat a variety of infections, diseases and bleeding lesions. Until the mid-18th century, surgery was the only effective option for addressing several conditions. But it was […]

Nicole was thirty-four, and the doctor had been direct: “It’s everywhere,” he said.

Time for me is double-edged: Every day brings me further from the low of my last cancer relapse, but every day also brings me closer to the next cancer recurrence — and eventually, death. Perhaps later than I think, but certainly sooner than I desire. There are, I imagine, two responses to that realization. The […]