You And The World: Agent Of Change; Brain Cancer

As recent as February of 2012 my best friends dad was checked into Lankenau Hospital off of Lancaster Avenue. He had tumors in his brain, as time progressed the tumors had turned into a serious form of cancer. By November and after many treatments of chemo he had become weak and frail. I was unaware of how serious his condition was until he then went to the hospital for a second time for which he stayed for about four and a half weeks until he was sent home. And was told he was not going to make it after the cancer spread from just his brain to then his stomach. For a project at school I have set out to make a difference, I have done my research on cancer, chemo, and tumors. Here is an excerpt from my blog post at school on the subject: “Brain tumors are created by abnormal division of cells, in the brain itself. They can also grow outside of the brain: on the skull, in blood vessels, and can also spread into other organs. Brain tumors are life threatening because there is little room for the tumor to grow, which forces it to push the brain to one side due to limited space. The skull is around the brain so unlike other tumors, you cannot act on the tumor until it is formed. That then causes unexplained symptoms. Brain tumors are about the trickiest to work on because it is risky to operate on the brain, especially after the patient is weak from prior surgery.My best friend's father has brain cancer, and cancer in his stomach. Everyday after school in November, I went to Lankenau Hospital to support my friend and her father. On November 30 of this year, he was released from the hospital. The cancer had finally spread to the entirety of his stomach and brain; there was nothing else that the doctors could for him except try to comfort him, and give him pain pills. He was far too weak for surgery; it would’ve been very risky to perform it on him at that stage in.” Mainly my interest is to make a difference in any way just to prevent cancer rather than be reactive to it and trying to cure it because more and more people are dying from all forms of cancers. Contact me at: tsamuels@scienceleadership.org

~Todd Samuels, Jr.

For my Agent of Change I wrote a letter to Lankenau Hospital. In which my friends dad stayed. I felt this would be effective because if I was able to directly tell the Hospital how I feel it might be most effective rather than trying to raise money which also is important. I just thought that it was not everyday that a 15 year old would voice his opinion through writing my hope was that I would raise enough attention to the doctors for them to write me back, or we could even find more ways for me to do research to learn to prevent cancer rather than treat it after it was too late. Through my letter I explain the condition and the fight that a loved one had to endure for nearly a year.

Since my second post I have realized that cancer is more dangerous than I originally thought it was. Cancer attacks one part of the body and it continues to spread which took the life of someone I cared about at first it was only in the brain, then it spread to the liver and stomach which ultimately took the life. “Brain tumors are created by abnormal division of cells, in the brain itself. They can also grow outside of the brain: on the skull, in blood vessels, and can also spread into other organs. Brain tumors are life threatening because there is little room for the tumor to grow, which forces it to push the brain to one side due to limited space. The skull is around the brain so unlike other tumors, you cannot act on the tumor until it is formed. That then causes unexplained symptoms. Brain tumors are about the trickiest to work on because it is risky to operate on the brain, especially after the patient is weak from prior surgery. My best friend's father has brain cancer, and cancer in his stomach. Everyday after school in November, I went to Lankenau Hospital to support my friend and her father. On November 30 of this year, he was released from the hospital. The cancer had finally spread to the entirety of his stomach and brain; there was nothing else that the doctors could for him except try to comfort him, and give him pain pills. He was far too weak for surgery; it would’ve been very risky to perform it on him at that stage in.” The previous quote from my blog post one shows how I felt about the strain of cancer before the death. Now I have further educated myself to understand how the cancer took over the body; I also put this in my letter just to give the doctors an understanding of what I knew and what I saw.

I mainly wanted the doctors to understand the loss, but at the same time we have to find ways to prevent cancer it is hard to do that when so many things supposedly cause cancer today. I just want answers directly as well which might be difficult to get. Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S., within the next decade it will be cancer. Why not try to prevent this is my only question, if we can treat it through chemo we can find a way to stop it. 

my bibliography ----> To the doctor whom it may concern,

As recent as February of 2012 my best friends dad was checked into Lankenau Hospital off of Lancaster Avenue. He had tumors in his brain, as time progressed the tumors had turned into a serious form of cancer. By November and after many treatments of chemo he had become weak and frail. I was unaware of how serious his condition was until he then went to the hospital for a second time for which he stayed for about four and a half weeks until he was sent home. And was told he was not going to make it after the cancer spread from just his brain to then his stomach. For a project at school I have set out to make a difference, I have done my research on cancer, chemo, and tumors. Here is an excerpt from my blog post at school on the subject: “Brain tumors are created by abnormal division of cells, in the brain itself. They can also grow outside of the brain: on the skull, in blood vessels, and can also spread into other organs. Brain tumors are life threatening because there is little room for the tumor to grow, which forces it to push the brain to one side due to limited space. The skull is around the brain so unlike other tumors, you cannot act on the tumor until it is formed. That then causes unexplained symptoms. Brain tumors are about the trickiest to work on because it is risky to operate on the brain, especially after the patient is weak from prior surgery.My best friend's father has brain cancer, and cancer in his stomach. Everyday after school in November, I went to Lankenau Hospital to support my friend and her father. On November 30 of this year, he was released from the hospital. The cancer had finally spread to the entirety of his stomach and brain; there was nothing else that the doctors could for him except try to comfort him, and give him pain pills. He was far too weak for surgery; it would’ve been very risky to perform it on him at that stage in.” Mainly my interest is to make a difference in any way just to prevent cancer rather than be reactive to it and trying to cure it because more and more people are dying from all forms of cancers. Contact me at: tsamuels@scienceleadership.org

~Todd Samuels, Jr.

For my Agent of Change I wrote a letter to Lankenau Hospital. In which my friends dad stayed. I felt this would be effective because if I was able to directly tell the Hospital how I feel it might be most effective rather than trying to raise money which also is important. I just thought that it was not everyday that a 15 year old would voice his opinion through writing my hope was that I would raise enough attention to the doctors for them to write me back, or we could even find more ways for me to do research to learn to prevent cancer rather than treat it after it was too late. Through my letter I explain the condition and the fight that a loved one had to endure for nearly a year.

Since my second post I have realized that cancer is more dangerous than I originally thought it was. Cancer attacks one part of the body and it continues to spread which took the life of someone I cared about at first it was only in the brain, then it spread to the liver and stomach which ultimately took the life. “Brain tumors are created by abnormal division of cells, in the brain itself. They can also grow outside of the brain: on the skull, in blood vessels, and can also spread into other organs. Brain tumors are life threatening because there is little room for the tumor to grow, which forces it to push the brain to one side due to limited space. The skull is around the brain so unlike other tumors, you cannot act on the tumor until it is formed. That then causes unexplained symptoms. Brain tumors are about the trickiest to work on because it is risky to operate on the brain, especially after the patient is weak from prior surgery. My best friend's father has brain cancer, and cancer in his stomach. Everyday after school in November, I went to Lankenau Hospital to support my friend and her father. On November 30 of this year, he was released from the hospital. The cancer had finally spread to the entirety of his stomach and brain; there was nothing else that the doctors could for him except try to comfort him, and give him pain pills. He was far too weak for surgery; it would’ve been very risky to perform it on him at that stage in.” The previous quote from my blog post one shows how I felt about the strain of cancer before the death. Now I have further educated myself to understand how the cancer took over the body; I also put this in my letter just to give the doctors an understanding of what I knew and what I saw.

I mainly wanted the doctors to understand the loss, but at the same time we have to find ways to prevent cancer it is hard to do that when so many things supposedly cause cancer today. I just want answers directly as well which might be difficult to get. Heart disease is the leading killer in the U.S., within the next decade it will be cancer. Why not try to prevent this is my only question, if we can treat it through chemo we can find a way to stop it.