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Hanna Burns
Mrs. DeBock
English 4 Honors
February 18, 2015

Essential Question: How cancer affects families?

Work thesis: Cancer can affect families in many different ways.
Refined thesis: Cancer can affect families emotionally, financially, and physically.

Annotated bibliography
Lisa, Mayoh. "This Is How Cancer Affected Our Family." Sunday Herald Sun (Melbourne)
(2012): 10. Newspaper Source Plus. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.
This article tells how Queensland schoolgirl Hannah Murphy was diagnosed with an
aggressive form of cancer, Ewing's Sarcoma, when she was just nine. Now at the age 16, she is
in remission. Hannahs parents and grandparents were at a loss of words on why out of all of
them Hannah would be the one diagnosed with this disease, most of them have already lived
there lives so why would God choose Hannah. It was so overwhelming, so surreal, like a bad
dream Hannahs mother says. Family and friends just wanted to be there for Hannah and show
her love and support. No one knew how much sympathy or tough love they should show towards
Hannah. Hannahs little brother, Josh, just wanted to be there for Hannah because he knew that
was his role. Hannah along with her brother Josh both joined and organization that helps children
with cancer as well as their family. This article is relevant because it shows how cancer affected
Hannah and her family.

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Stenberg, UnaRuland, Cornelia M.Miaskowski, Christine. "Review Of The Literature On The Effects Of
Caring For A Patient With Cancer." Psycho-Oncology 19.10 (2010): 1013-1025. Psychology and
Behavioral Sciences Collection. Web. 18 Feb. 2015.

This article tells about the role family caregivers play in the patients life.
Family caregivers are often the primary source of social and emotional support for
patients and play a major role in how well patients manage their illness. Family
caregivers can include a whole range of relationships, such as relatives, friends,
neighbors, others. Family caregivers are a valuable source of essential and unpaid
support, serving as a critical supplement to other formal health care services. They
experience many problems and burdens related to caregiving. They experience emotional
problems, like anxiety, depression, fatigue, and sleeping problems. Some of the emotional
problems reported by family caregivers are anxiety, worry, depression, fear of losing
patient, anger, terrified, always up and down, and live in constant fear. Some social
problems they reported are loss of income and savings, missed work, stop work to care,
role changes, and loneliness. This article is relevant because it gives examples from
families on how cancer affected them.
Woniak, Katarzyna, and Dariusz Iycki. "Cancer: A Family At Risk." Menopausal Review /
Przeglad Menopauzalny 13.4 (2014): 253-261. Academic Search Complete. Web. 18 Feb.
2015

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This article speaks about the diagnosis of cancer on families. The daily routine,
common activities, and distribution of duties all have to change. How the families release their
anger towards medical staff, God, fate, or toward their family members. Families that deal with
cancer deal with an immense amount of stress and face many challenging situations. The
caregiving for the patient can last up 14-24 months. Family caregivers begin to have anxiety and
can go through depression. Cancer puts families at risk since it imposes and alternation in the
relations among family members. During the battle the family constantly faces the fear of
reoccurrence of cancer. The entire time family caregivers often feel overwhelmed with the
obligation and roles they have to pick up. This article is relevant because it gives some examples
of what families go through when their loved one is diagnosed with cancer.