Quotes & Sayings About Someone Who Has Cancer

With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life. — Kevin Whately

It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines. — Isaac Asimov

In a way, cancer is so simple and so natural. The older you get, this is just one of the things that happens as the clock ticks. — Richard Smalley

The virus-to-cancer connection is where medicinal mushrooms offer unique opportunities for medical research. — Paul Stamets

When word came that Keith had died of cancer, Abel was astonished. That astonishment had to do with death, with the wiping out of a person, with the puzzlement that the man was simply gone. — Elizabeth Strout

86. I get angry when believers unhesitatingly attribute every good thing in the world to God - and then respond to bad things by saying, "God works in mysterious ways." If God's ways are so mysterious, and we can't begin to understand his thinking behind tsunamis and drought and pediatric cancer, then what makes you think you understand his intentions when it comes to pretty sunsets or cute puppies or helping you find the peanut butter? — Greta Christina

Studies of cancer patients show that attitudes of mind have very little effect on clinical outcome. We may say we are fighting cancer, but cancer is merely fighting us; we may think we have beaten it, when it has only gone away to regroup. It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to. And so, perhaps, with grief. We imagine we have battled against it, been purposeful, overcome sorrow, scrubbed the rust from our soul, when all that has happened is that grief has moved elsewhere, shifted its interest. — Julian Barnes

Things people say to depressives that they don't say in other life-threatening situations:

'Come on, I know you've got tuberculosis, but it could be worse. At least no one's died.'
'Why do you think you got cancer of the stomach?'
'Yes, I know, colon cancer is hard, but you want to try living with someone who has got it. Sheesh. Nightmare.'
'Oh, Alzheimer's you say? Oh, tell me about it, I get that all the time.'
'Ah, meningitis. Come on, mind over matter.'
'Yes, yes, your leg is on fire, but talking about it all the time isn't going to help things, is it?'
'Okay. Yes. Yes. Maybe your parachute has failed. But chin up. — Matt Haig

When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too. — Terri Clark

I'm not someone who has had to deal with much personal drama outside of the usual: growing up with parents who hated each other, two marriages and divorces of my own. There was the cancer thing, too. — Penny Marshall

I am the sky and nothing can stick to me. The sky is open and vast and stays unchanged no matter what; it is always the sky. A storm can roll through it, an airplane can roar through, and it is always the sky. — Geralyn Lucas

I am committed to ovarian cancer research on a national level and in my community in the Carolinas. It is important to me to know the women that are true fighters of this difficult disease. — Andie MacDowell

As someone who has had cancer, I learned that you don't have to die. Look at me. Because of early detection, I'm fine. I'm cured. I'm well. — Kate Jackson

Those who say that I am being punished are saying that god can't think of anything more vengeful than cancer for a heavy smoker. — Christopher Hitchens

My family has had a lot of trouble with cancer in particular. There are a lot of great causes out there but for me to pick one I would say anything that is cancer related. — Casey James

We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells. — Norman Mailer

Because that's what unfaithfulness is, isn't it? A cancer that's always there in the back of your mind, eating away at the foundations of the relationship. It's happened once, it could happen again, so you're always looking for telltale signs or symptoms to show that it's reappeared ... — Matt Dunn

All those years when Ronni thought she was sick, all those years convinced that every mole was melanoma, every cough was lung cancer, every case of heartburn was an oncoming heart attack, after all those years, when the gods finally stopped taking care of her she wasn't scared. What a pity, she thought after the doctor first diagnosed her. Then, when she refused to believe it, after the second, and the third, agreed, she thought again, what a pity I wasted all those years worrying about the worst. Somehow now that the worst was upon her, it was peaceful, calming, as if this was what she had always been waiting for. Now that it was here, it wasn't scary at all. — Jane Green

Sometimes, you know, I cry. And sometimes I scream. And I get really angry. And I get really upset, you know, into wallowing in self-pity sometimes. And I think that it's all part of the healing. — Christina Applegate

health risks of diets loaded with red meat, such as hamburger and steak, and processed meats, such as hot dogs, bacon, and cold cuts. They found that over a ten-year period, men who ate the equivalent of a quarter-pounder hamburger a day had a 22 percent higher risk of dying from cancer and a 27 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease than those men whose diet did not contain such red meat. With women, it was even more impressive. Women who ate large amounts of red meat had a 20 percent higher risk of dying from cancer and a 50 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease. — Richard Furman

Enoki mushrooms, a tasty variety commonly sold in grocery stores, were one of the first mushrooms studied for preventing cancer. — Paul Stamets

I had to tell Dad, 'It will be okay and be positive; keep praying and have faith'. I have always known about cancer, but to be around someone who has it and to see what it does in such a short space of time was hard. It makes you think about your life, about what is important. — Jermain Defoe

Cancer affects so many people, and even if it hasn't affected someone in your family then you know someone who has had it. — Mollie King

It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

But my body was telling its story. I have read a lot of stuff about cancer. I needed this book. I wish I'd had this book when I had cancer. I wanted someone to be talking to me about "fart floors." I wanted somebody telling me what it was like to have a [colostomy] bag. I felt so alone. And if you're a person who's been traumatized [by past abuse], it's so potentially re-traumatizing. You slip right into "oh my god, this is the only person this has happened to before" mentality: "I'm especially bad and I have especially bad cancer ... " — Eve Ensler

Duality is a part of reality, and there is definitely winning and losing. If you don't think so talk to someone who has beaten cancer, talk to somebody who hasn't. — Frederick Lenz

I see racism as a cancer. It is a cancer growing in us. Unless we stop it, it vegetates and grows bigger which hurts every one of us. — Pearl Tan

I call my mom from the car. I tell her that Neutral Milk Hotel is playing at the Hideout and she says, "Who? What? You're hiding out?" And then I hum a few bars of one of their songs and Mom says, "Oh, I know that song. It's on the mix you made me," and I say, "Right," and she says, "Well you have to be back by eleven," and I say, "Mom this is a historical event. History doesn't have a curfew," and she says, "Back by eleven," and I say, "Fine. Jesus," and then she has to go cut cancer out of someone. — John Green

Cancer was a merciless executioner. It stripped away dignity and autonomy, leaving only pain and horror in its wake. — Catie Rhodes

People used to say everyone knows someone who's had breast cancer. In the past few weeks, I've learned something else: Everyone has someone close to them who has had breast cancer. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Sometimes, when I talk to someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer or some other illness, I'll remind them: "If you were honest with yourself, you were depressed before this happened. And if this were over you would be happy for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and then something else would come along." — Marianne Williamson

The scene before her flattened, lost one of its dimensions, and the noise dribbled irrelevantly down its face. Something was coming. This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking
someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health, worshipped their own lives, spat on their dreams, turned their backs on their true beliefs, yes, yes, and all will be saved. All will be saved. All will be saved. — Denis Johnson

There's a reason humans peg-out around eighty: prose fatigue. It looks like organ failure or cancer or stroke but it's really just the inability to carry on clambering through the assault course of mundane cause and effect. If we ask Sheila then we can't ask Ron. If I have the kippers now then it's quiche for tea. Four score years is about all the ifs and thens you can take. Dementia's the sane realisation you just can't be doing with all that anymore. — Glen Duncan

I had uterine cancer, which is the most under-funded and under-researched of all the female cancers. — Fran Drescher

The word 'cancer' carries with it enormous fear, fear for the future, fear for family. — Wayne Swan

My family and I participate in 'Cycle for Survival.' it was started by a friend of my wife's who lost his wife to a rare form of cancer. — Brian Krzanich

My father had spent years fighting cancer of the head and neck. He had numerous operations, and he was reduced and reduced and reduced. By the end, he had a growth so big under his eye that it hurt to look at him. — Rachel Joyce

Courage is not the absence of fear — Richard Stengel

This "Not Today" attitude of yours is a cancer. Cancer of the character. It stunts your growth. — David Mitchell

You're giving me lung cancer. — Rainbow Rowell

Quentin flicked a quick glance back at her again. Poppy. This girl had the wrong name. She should have been Rose. Great face, lots of prickles. — Ros Baxter

Cancer had a chance to break me down, but I was determined to fight back with strength and positivity. — Samantha Harris

I'm one of those people that will say, 'My cancer was a gift.' — Melissa Etheridge

All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last. — Aldous Huxley

Cancer is an emotional disease. — Marina Abramovic

We are not dealing with a scientific problem. We are dealing with a political issue. — Samuel Epstein

Ann prayed because of a gut-wrenching, throbbing pain in her soul. She urgently begged the Lord for her life. — K. Howard Joslin

Where does my body end and an invader start? And cancer, a tumor, is something you grow out of your own tissue. How does that happen? Where does medical ability end and start? — Dave DeBronkart

Cancer's life is a recapitulation of the body's life, its existence a pathological mirror of our own. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I told her that the pills will let her slip off and that when a person dies there comes a long clean sleep."
"That's all," Alexandria whispers, echoing after her, "a long clean sleep. — Annie Fisher

I'm not one of those people who think that cancer is some kind of jousting match. People live or die based on good medicine, good luck, and the grace of God. The people that die from it did not fail. The people who live will die another day. — Paul Acampora

Shame was one of those things that had to be excised like a cancer, but it was a hard thing to remove when it was wrapped around your heart. — Simon Wood

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. — D.B.C. Pierre

I thought I knew what fear was, until I heard the words 'You have cancer'. — Lance Armstrong