Bill Bonanno Quotes

My mother started to suffer from multiple sclerosis, but nobody knew what MS was then. My father didn't - and later he suffered a great deal of guilt over that. It was an awful business and very fraught.

After I got married, the first child born to us was mentally handicapped.

In the case of my husband, we found that facing a life-threatening illness prodded us to make a dramatic change in our lives.

There are lots of dimensions to being a cancer patient. The overwhelming one is that it takes over your life.

Talking to my wife, we stare at each other, saying, 'How is this happening? Why is this happening? Why now?' It's nothing I ever aspired to.

The only real experiences I've had with therapists were the ones who were working with me and my family when my mother was ill.

When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, my middle school friends and myself really had no idea the impact of that diagnosis, but my family did.

My dad lost his hearing in the last 18 months of his life, and as a result, I witnessed first-hand the effect that this can have on a family.

When cancer affects somebody in the family, the whole family is affected.

I was going blind, and I was in a wheelchair. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life living with my parents.

My dad had a stroke. It's one of those life-changing events. It was right around the time I was turning 40. We were doing 'L.A. Law,' and I got this call that my dad was in Rome and had had a stroke. I want to stress that it wasn't a huge stroke, but it was enough to provide a serious wake-up call.

There's nothing like a family crisis, especially a divorce, to force a person to re-evaluate his life.

My parents' divorce made an important change in my life. It affected me.

In the beginning, when I first found out I had a disease that was incurable, emotionally I had to get used to the idea of being sick before I could think about making any other major decisions in my life.

When someone has cancer, the whole family and everyone who loves them does, too.

In 2002, my daughter was diagnosed with a rare form of colon cancer. And it was such a shock, a surprise to us.

This story going around about the CIA … sending in folks to get Castro, It’s incredible. They have a man that was involved that was brought into the CIA, with a number of others, and instructed by the CIA and the Attorney General [then Robert F. Kennedy] to assassinate Castro after the Bay of Pigs.

Central Intelligence Agency’s Intention To Send Hoodlums to Cuba to Assassinate Castro

My dad had a series of heart attacks when I was a little girl, and our world was shaped by these huge, traumatic events.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I've got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in February 2012, and finding that out really messed me up.

As a caregiver, I always thought I had empathy for Chris's situation, and certainly one family member's disability affects the whole family dynamic in myriad ways. But as I go through various tests and discomforts and uncertainty about the future that cancer can bring, I feel a strong, visceral connection to what Chris went through.

Being Stephen's carer was such a struggle, and it's a lonely job looking after a disabled person. Thinking back, I honestly wonder how I got through it.

The truth is my dad was a lovely man who had to retire early from his job as an engineer because he had osteoporosis. It meant he was forced to wear a harness and could hardly breathe.

Aine had to change her entire routine; my dad had to quit his job, which was painful because he loves to be busy. My parents eventually moved back to Brazil, so since then, it has been me and my wife, although they are always involved.