Character Analysis: Mom's Cancer

Mom’s cancer As Hamlet poignantly stated in his soliloquy, “To be or not to be that is the question,” patients with cancer have to decide whether they would undergo chemo and/or radiotherapy. The side effects of chemotherapy according to American Cancer Society are fatigue, hair loss, nausea, vomiting, appetite change, constipation and decreased immunity. In MOM’S CANCER by Brian flies, Flies narrates the progression of his mother’s cancer in a graphic novel style. In this graphic novel, he reveals the challenge that her mother, a cancer patient, experienced from the scope of third party along with the joy of overcoming the disease. One thing that was striking in this novel is that she was generally unknowledgeable about the cancer in

In this scene, she was telling her son about the what she expects about her diagnostic scan on the following day. She claims that regardless of the outcome, it will be “WIN-WIN.” What she meant by that is that if the chemotherapy was working than she could expect to see the cancer shrinking. This is obviously the ideal news for her. The latter “WIN” shows that she does not have to undergo the chemotherapy. Typically, normal people would respond to the latter results as failure, sad, and hopelessness; however, that is not the case for her. Since she truly believe that tomorrow will be a great day regardless of the outcome. Her facial expression seems very calm, and it insinuate her tranquility. In other words, she is in a relaxed state, and stating what she truly feels about her treatment plan. Moreover, in contrast to the page forty-seven’s picture with a dark background, where she is suffering from the chemotherapy, the author chose to illuminate this picture by using a white background. This also implies that she is very optimistic about her future, and she is content about her decision to fight against the cancer. In this page ninety-eight, she acknowledges that she does not enjoy undergoing chemotherapy, and it is reasonable to assume based on the common sense that nobody enjoys to experience the chemotherapy’s side effect. However,

It is normal to expect that anything below twenty-five percent sounds like a death sentence, her experience debunked this common way of thinking. It shows that she learned that she could live as long as she has a chance to live. This gave us an insight that medical statistic is not everything, and there is a hope that she could survive even if the odds are low. With this knowledge, experience and her optimistic character, it is more than likely that she would choose to undergo the chemotherapy even if the process of this treatment is