Friday, January 24, 2014

Reaction Paper-Podcast 2013-72071

Name: Fabia, Bianca Anne M.
Student No.: 2013-72071
Section: THY
Reaction Paper for the podcast about the rhetoric of cancer

            Cancer is a disease that has claimed a lot of lives these past couple of years. I noticed that more and more people get this disease nowadays than in the past. I guess that because of our lifestyle, we’re more prone to develop it.
            My grandfather was the closest person to me whose life was cut short, in my opinion, because of cancer. I saw how he coped with it and what he went through while living with cancer. And since he lived with us, I was able to witness how he managed to live with it.
            In the podcast, the issue they were mainly discussing about was how to best talk to a person with cancer about the disease. The guy in the podcast was able to talk to different experts about it and he was able to get an idea on how people, in general, view cancer.
            The usual thing that they say to people with cancer is that they should fight it like you’re going to war against it. I don’t really like this view because I feel like it is set to make them feel worse in the end; it pressures them into fighting it instead of letting them feel all these emotions that come with finding out that you have this disease. In my psychology class, we talked about these five steps in accepting or dealing with death; it works both ways for the dying person and the person who would be left behind. The five steps were denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance; of course, every human being would experience them in different ways and paces but I think that all of us deserve to be given time to accept this possibility of dying. So what’s my point in bringing this up? My point is that if you pressure the cancer victims into fighting, even if it wasn’t intentional, then you somehow deprive them of really feeling or accepting the disease and the fact that they may be dying.

            All in all, my view on it could be wrong for some since I know that most people would like to look at cancer as something to be fought and conquered; I think that everyone has their own opinions about it and that that should be respected since people cope in different ways.

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