The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks Book Report

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The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a book written by Rebecca Skloot. Chapter 1 begins shortly after Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, and her son, Joe, were born. After those two were born, she then began to experience vaginal bleeding at the wrong time of the month. Feeling like something was wrong, Henrietta rushed to the doctor. She only went to see the doctor “If she felt she had no other choice”. She rushed to the Gynecologist, Howard Jones. For him only tot reveal that she had a cervical tumor. In 1951, Howard and his boss, Richard Wesley Telinde, were working hard to develop and improve methods for treating cervical cancer. With insufficient methods to gather information about the cancer, a number of women were accidently diagnosed with cervical cancer. Telinde wanted to improve treatment and diagnosis of cervical cancer, so he took tissue samples from Jones’ patients. Growing healthy and cancerous Samples of cervical tissue. They ended up taking Henrietta’s samples, but his coworkers were sure they would die altogether. After the procedure, Henretta Returned home and resumed her normal life once again. Her family had no idea she was sick. Henretta kept her sickness a secret, …show more content…

They told her she was fine. She kept retuning to the hospital complaining of pain, and they kept telling her she was fine, this process repeated until they found an enormous tumor in her abdominal region. Henrettas suffering went on for months. She had tumors in most of her major organs, her kidneys were failing and she was swollen. She had so many blood transfusions that the doctors had to cut her off. Henrietta could not fight off the cancer forever and eventually passed away, and after her death nobody told her children as diseases like this were not spoken openly within families, so the children did not know about the mysterious disappearance of there mother for