cancer

People take ownership of sickness and disease by saying things like MY high blood pressure MY diabetes, MY heart disease, MY depression, MY! MY! MY! Don't own it because it doesn't belong to you!

I am not depressed; my life is just shit. As a consequence of my not being depressed, I am not like them. You need to know this from the very off. You need to know I, Arch Fry, will not allow myself to be neatly pigeonholed, erroneously labelled or closed off in some tidy little box - one to be shelved away and conveniently forgotten about. No, I am not depressed: NOT. DEPRESSED.You see, I__ just not stuck in some deep unassailable chasm like all the rest, like all these other poor fuckers who__e so readily accepted that noose of a word.

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.

I__e seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly_ they can__ kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I__e seen humans die from smoking them_ if I were you I would stop smoking them.___hy should I? You smoke __m all the time, you chain-smoke cigarettes,_ Mandy pointed out.__eah, I started doing that back in the Sixties_ for reasons you likely saw on those VHS tapes_ but I__ not a person, I__ Pollution, things like that aren__ dangerous to me but they are to you,_ Alecto told her. __t__ not a good idea.

Mental imbalance is about as acceptable as herpes. It__ never going to be accepted. But really, it__ a disease just like cancer. It just happens, and eats away all the good parts of your brain, like judgment and happiness and perception and memory and life. And you can die from depression just like any other disease. And it__ not as if people choose it. So why is it still a joke of medicine? __he died of cancer._ is a lot more socially acceptable to people than __he committed suicide.

Like a deep sad noteplayed beneath the oceanwaving through the orbthe memories of youthe bittersweet echoesinfixed forever in my heart

I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.

Negative self assertions are like weeds in the garden of your life. Cleanse your garden of any such weeds.

Hope for the best,brace yourself for the worst and no matter what you__e faced with, make a plan to KEEP GOING!

I learn so much that I previously did not know about the world of the immobile that it is hard to believe it all takes place over a few hours. At random: I learn about the casual indifference of the London cabbie to the wheelchair user and that the clearance on accessible entrances is measured in millimetres less than a knuckle. I learn how intractable it is to push a grown man around for hours and how spontaneity is the privilege of the able-bodied. In solid counterpart to all this grief, I learn about the lengths nurses are prepared to go to assist a purely recreational and ambitious project by one of their patients.

Modern society - everyone thinks getting cancer is a normal aspect of life.

We live in the irradiated lazy indoor cancer society.

All of us - who might have probed space, or cured cancer, or built industries - were, instead, black victims of the white man's American social system.

I do not wish my anger and pain and fear about cancer to fossilize into yet another silence, nor to rob me of whatever strength can lie at the core of this experience, openly acknowledged and examined ... imposed silence about any area of our lives is a tool for separation and powerlessness.

We all have the best laid plans for our children, and they go and ruin it all by growing up any way they want to. What the hell was it all for, then? (Real Life and Liars)

Love"I'm in love with you," he said quietly."Augustus,"I said."I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.""Augustus," I said again, not knowing what else to say. It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I couldn't say anything back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed, and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window.

I truly believe that the children who are diagnosed with cancer are some of the wisest, sweetest, strongest, and most loving children. They have gained a bigger perspective of the world in such a short time. They become wise beyond their years.

My encounter with desperation while witnessing the death of a precious child changed me, teaching me that although we will have sad times, we can move on, chastened and changed but resilient and hopeful. Laurel showed me one way to live with hope as well as cancer as she thrived even when tumors grew within her small body. She exhibited how a child can push aside despair and appreciate as many moments as possible, to believe in the power of resurrection, both the human spirit and in a Biblical sense.