Sue Perkins Quotes

My mother battled cancer for 12 years before losing her fight.

When you go through a long illness, certainly one of cancer, there's a certain release from it and relief that it has come to an end, because the suffering can be unbearable, as opposed to an abrupt stop to life when they go out the door and there's a loved one who never comes home because of some accident.

We have lost close friends and relatives to cancer and Parkinson's disease, and the level of personal suffering inflicted on patients and their families by these diseases is horrific.

Years ago I watched my 1st wife suffer through cancer and she went to be with Jesus.

My dad was suffering with cancer for six years and my mum was in coma for three-and-a-half months. So, I have seen the hospital life.

I had first-hand experience watching my father's health decline over the stretch of 13 years.

My mother did not want cancer to interfere with my life, as she knew it would eventually end hers.

My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He was a fighter. By the time he was ready to die he wasn't able to die in the way that he wanted to, which seemed an outrage to me.

My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer.

There is nothing more painful than watching a child with a terminal disease.

I have people that have died from cancer and friends that are dealing with cancer.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

My father had spent years fighting cancer of the head and neck. He had numerous operations, and he was reduced and reduced and reduced. By the end, he had a growth so big under his eye that it hurt to look at him.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, so we ended up burying him a year to the day that he was diagnosed.

First-class delivery of children's palliative care is life-changing. When families are confronted with the shattering news that their children have a life-limiting condition, their world can fall apart.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

I think some people do want to die, and they will get a disease. There are people who know their lives are so troubled, and their bodies are getting them out of here.

It's very hard when I've seen a couple of people very beloved in my life with terrible degenerative diseases.

A few months before my dad died, his eyes had started to go, and his skin was turning green. When he finally went to hospital, he was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer. None of us kids knew why the old man ignored the doctors and refused their help, but none of us were surprised, either.

Going through chemo is a monster. You literally feel like you're dying every day.

We all have somebody in our lives, that however closely related or not, is affected by terminal illness and these amazing nurses, who often work through the night with people, not only suffering from a terminal illness but their families, they're just extraordinary people.

"I'm going over the valley." (Dying from throat cancer, his doctor found him wandering around his room, asked him where was he going?)

And in bed, deep inside the building, are all the headaches that won't go away. The failed kidneys, the rashes, the ragged-edged moles, the lumps on the breast, the coughs that have turned nasty. In the Marie Curie Ward on the fourth floor are the kids with cancer. Their bodies secretly and slowly being consumed. And then there's the mortuary, where the dead lie in refrigerated drawers with name tags on their feet.

A lot of people spend their last decade of their lives in pain and misery combating disease.

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.