Quotes & Sayings About Someone Suffering From Cancer

So at family gatherings ... I try to stick to the acceptable script. Indeed, I discover that the less I say, the happier everyone seems to be with me. I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't have been better off as a paraplegic or afflicted by some tragic form of cancer. The invisibility and periodicity of my disorder, along with how often I border on normalcy, allows them to evade my need for their understanding. And because our most enduring family heirloom is avoidance and denial of pain and suffering, I don't need much prompting to shut myself down in their presence. — Kiera Van Gelder

I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of stomach cancer. I decided that nobody should suffer that much. — Gertrude B. Elion

Listen: I'm not going to tell you what to do. We cannot make decisions for you. We came to help, but we do not want to interfere. We gave you a gift, yours to do with as you will. But you've heard all that before. We're happy to talk. To answer questions about why we don't stop war and suffering, cure cancer, end poverty, point the way to heaven or point out that there is no heaven. Ask us anything. We don't mind. We try our best to be candid, but there is an inevitable degree of mutual incomprehension. Because your qualia aren't our qualia. Because we're running models of who you think you are and what you think you know, but they're just models. Because the map isn't the territory. Because we aren't gods. We aren't even close. You know? At best, we're pipers at the gates of dawn. Who have come to this little blue planet to help. — Paul McAuley

We can change our thinking. Rather than viewing the chemical adulteration of our environment and our bodies as the inevitable practice of convenience and progress, we can decide that cancer is inconvenient and toxic pollution archaic and primitive. We can start seeing the creation of carcinogens as the result of outmoded technologies. We can demand green engineering and green chemistry. We can let our systems of industry and agriculture know that they are suffering from a design flaw. — Sandra Steingraber

If you could read some of the stories that we had before us of parents of children dying of, let's say, bone cancer. Or people who dealt with family members drowning in their own bodies, in the end, suffering without any hope of modern medical science easing their pain or offering any comfort. With the absolute knowledge that they were going to die anyway. I can't quite comprehend how we could want those people to continue to suffer that extreme agony on the understanding that it is the will of a creator or some other philosophical concept. — Kelvin Ogilvie

I needed someone to tell me how God could allow someone He loved to suffer so much when I wouldn't do this to someone I hated. — Sarah Thebarge

An amicus curiae brief in Roe from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and several other medical groups observed that "a woman suffering from heart disease, diabetes or cancer whose pregnancy worsens the underlying pathology may be denied a medically indicated therapeutic abortion under the statute because death is not certain."8 — Katha Pollitt

A patient suffering with cancer of the throat was informed of a new X-ray machine that would cure his condition. This man could neither read nor write, nor was he informed about any of the instruments or procedures of medical practice. When he first sat down in the doctor's office and received into his mouth a thermometer with which the doctor sought to take his temperature, he believed he was undergoing X-ray treatment. The doctor, alert to the practices of psychology, recognized this, and after leaving the thermometer in the patient's mouth for ten minutes, excused him and told him to return in two days. Three weeks of treatment with a thermometer cured this patient's cancerous condition! Obviously, it wasn't the thermometer that did it. It was Faith! — Uell S. Andersen

So if there is a purpose to the suffering that is cancer, I think it must be this: it's meant to improve us. — Lance Armstrong

Eventually sinking into despair, [Heinrich von Kleist] shot himself in 1811 as part of a suicide pact made with a woman suffering from incurable cancer. — Nicholas Tucker

As my nostrils filled with the stench of burnt hair and my friends scurried to clean up the mess, I thought, 'If your hair catches on fire while you're making a wish, does that mean it isn't coming true? — Sarah Thebarge

Reducing the price of AIDS drugs gave me so much satisfaction that I've been thinking what else I could do. One day, I thought, 'Let's look at cancer and see how we can spare cancer patients' unnecessary suffering.' — Yusuf Hamied

Part of me was afraid that if I raised my fist to the sky and demanded an answer now, I would hear a thundering and calloused, 'Because I said so," from God in heaven. And I may not ever want to speak to Him again. — Sarah Thebarge

Our society is turning toward more and more needless consumption. It is a vicious circle that I compare to cancer ... Should we eliminate suffering, diseases? The idea is beautiful, but perhaps not a benefit for the long term. We should not allow our dread of diseases to endanger the future of our species ... In order to stabilize world population, we need to eliminate 350,000 people a day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Suffering can precipitate creativity, liberating the creator through inspiration and then many available channels of human communication, and therefore there is value in suffering. — Brent Green

I felt great empathy for my friend, as one form of cancer after another emerged to challenge him. I felt sympathy for his suffering that surely clawed at his daily routines, always active and busy, but he rarely verbalized complaints while courageously challenging his archenemy. He met pain and physical decline with 600-calorie workouts; he discarded anxieties somewhere along innumerable running trails; he faced death by running through life at full stride. — Brent Green

Though sporting a hideous mustache is in no way comparable to the physical pain and mental suffering men with these diseases endure, Movember still forces participants to challenge their manhood on a daily basis. Growing a moustache for men's cancer isn't as feel-good an activity as running a marathon for a cure. — David Sax

There had always been a little wiggle room in state abortion laws, because doctors were still permitted to perform them for "therapeutic" reasons - to save a woman's life, for example.7 But what did that mean, exactly? An amicus curiae brief in Roe from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and several other medical groups observed that "a woman suffering from heart disease, diabetes or cancer whose pregnancy worsens the underlying pathology may be denied a medically indicated therapeutic abortion under the statute because death is not certain. — Katha Pollitt

Every moment of this experience we call a physical life is determined by the choices you make in your thoughts, intentions, and actions. Thus, when you choose to experience a thought, image, or activity from a place of loving, joyful, and compassionate intentions for yourself and others, you have the power to weave a lovely fabric that heals your mind, body, and soul. When you choose differently, the fabric you weave may contribute to an experience of suffering and pain in the form of mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual anguish. The choice is always yours. — Susan Barbara Apollon

I believe Williams was the only one of us, except perhaps Ronald Tolkien, from whom Lewis learnt any of his thinking. It was Charles Williams who expounded to him the doctrine of co-inherence and the idea that one had power to accept into one's own body the pain of someone else, through Christian love. This was a power...he had been allowed to use to ease the suffering of his wife, a cancer victim — Jocelyn Gibb

She did not begin to tell real lies until Rosa was in hospital suffering that filthy rot that left her all eaten out inside, as light and fragile as a pine log infested with white ant — Peter Carey

Perhaps the greatest danger in the way that alternative therapists behave is simply the promotion of their own treatments when patients should be in the care of a conventional doctor. There are numerous reports of patients with serious conditions (e.g. diabetes, cancer, AIDS) suffering harm after following irresponsible advice form alternative practitioners instead of following the advice of a doctor. — Simon Singh

If we include hedonistic philosophy in hospitals, the lives of patients suffering from cancer would be much, much better. — Michel Onfray

In addition to relieving patient suffering, research is needed to help reduce the enormous economic and social burdens posed by chronic diseases such as osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, cancer, heart disease, and stroke. — Ike Skelton

My family understands the pain of struggling with a loved one who's suffering from a blood-related cancer, and we seek to support those who are working to find a cure. — Nadia Bjorlin

In high school, I had two friends that were suffering from cancer. I would go and sing for them while they were in hospital, and I sang at their services after they passed. — Matthew Morrison

The Bucket List is a movie about two old codgers who are nothing like people, both suffering from cancer that is nothing like cancer, and setting off on adventures that are nothing like possible. I urgently advise hospitals: Do not make the DVD available to your patients; there may be an outbreak of bedpans thrown at TV screens. — Roger Ebert

Clean water is a necessity that we can no longer take for granted. Each year more people die of water related diseases than any other cause of death on this planet. With a higher rate of suffering and mortality than diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol, or war; or any two combined for that matter! An entire economy is growing around water. Those without money are suffering the most and risk severe illness from contaminated sources — Jewel

If prayer works, why can't God cure cancer or grow back a severed limb? Why so much avoidable suffering that God could so readily prevent? Why does God have to be prayed to at all? Doesn't He already know what cures need to be performed? Dossey also begins with a quote from Stanley Krippner, M.D. (described as "one of the most authoritative investigators of the variety of unorthodox healing methods used around the world"): [T]he research data on distant, prayer-based healing are promising, but too sparse to allow any firm conclusion to be drawn. This after many trillions of prayers over the millennia. — Carl Sagan

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident. — Pierce Brosnan

Earlier this month, the Vatican's top bioethics official condemned as "reprehensible" the assisted suicide of an East Bay woman, Brittany Maynard, who was suffering terminal brain cancer and said she wanted to die with dignity. Francis didn't refer to the Maynard case specifically. While denouncing euthanasia in general, he also condemned abortion, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research. — Anonymous

Giving cancer to laboratory animals has not and will not help us to understand the disease or to treat those persons suffering from it. — Albert Sabin