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Example research essay topic: Epstein Barr Virus Book Was Written - 4,832 words

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The Marriage p. 15 Gilda met Gene Wilder while they were making a movie Hanky Panky. It wasn t too successful, nor did it do well for her career, but it did change her life. They were married in the south of France on September 19, 1984. (p. 17) Gene loved France. Gilda had been there only once before when she was eighteen. All the terrible things that happen to tourists happened to her while she was there. She lost her traveler s checks, she got diarrhea from getting so upset over the Anne Frank house.

She said a lot of weird stuff happened while she was in Paris that was nicely put, not too romantic. Well all this being said, Gilda learned to love Paris after seeing it with Gene. Gene was also really into sports, and this got Gilda into it. She even took tennis lessons. She really wanted to be married to him though. Well not too long after their trip to Paris, they broke up.

She was pretty upset. She decided to direct her love elsewhere and get a dog. Something Gilda said that was cool: Dogs are the most amazing creatures they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive. So Gilda gets Sparkle and her and Gene get back together about five weeks later. (p. 26) They do another movie together, The Woman In Red, which turned out to be mildly popular. They were going to go to France again but Sparkle ate rat poison so Gilda had to stay home and take care of her.

She told Gene to go on and go though. And he did. When he came back he brought her an engagement ring. So then they went back to France and got married there. Chapter 2 The Baby and the Movie Star p. 30 Gilda wanted to have a baby with Gene but her tubes were closed. But she refused to accept the infertility sentence that had been handed to her.

But she also found it very difficult to literally make the decision to have a baby. She had been pregnant in the sixties, and at nineteen years old had an illegal abortion that probably influenced the messy state of her reproductive organs as they were then. She then went on to find out everything she could about the in vitro fertilization program at UCLA. (p. 34) They decided to go this route, and Gene gave her daily injections. They kept making her take the shots which was part of their experimental protocol but it messed up and the pregnancy test came back negative.

She then started concentrating solely on her ovaries and driving Gene wild. Then they started a new movie called Haunted Honeymoon where they had to be in England for quite sometime. Even after all the craziness over the baby Gilda decided to put that on hold while she explored her career as a movie star. (p. 41) Well sure enough, before too long, she ended up pregnant. Neither of them were thinking about it or even trying for a baby. It just happened. Unfortunately, she had a miscarriage.

She then threw herself right back into her work. Chapter 3 Forty p. 46 She bounced back pretty quickly from the miscarriage, but caught a cold that was going around. She couldn t seem to shake the cold. They finally came back to America after they were done shooting the movie and Sparkle was plenty mad that they had left her there all that time.

A new element was then added to her symptoms a fog like thing kept rolling over her. (p. 48) She had elevated antibodies which was eventually said to be part of the Epstein Barr virus. She ran a low grade fever for the next couple of weeks. She had really weird health patterns. She got really depressed about her health situation. Gilda seemed like she was just in and out of her depression. She felt like her career was slipping out of her control. (p. 53) In April of 1986 terrorism was just running rampant and she couldn t get to England to be with Gene because it was too dangerous to fly.

Of course Chernobyl happened right around this timed and that spared everybody out too. During that month she started having severe pelvic cramping. The doctor told her that she had the Epstein -Barr virus along with mittelschmerz: fitting diseases for the queen of neurosis. She took vitamins and ate good food. She and Gene had a really nice vacation. She was still having a lot of medical vacations though.

When they went back to Connecticut the fog rolled back over her and she couldn t get out of bed for three days. Her friend Graciela Daniele called her and told her that she should be working on the stage or on the theater. This made Gilda feel really good to know that Daniele had that much confidence in her. (p. 55) When her birthday rolled around all she wanted to do was play miniature golf. They then spent the next month in Connecticut doing publicity for their upcoming movie, Haunted Honeymoon. Gene did Good Morning America and Gilda did Late Night With David Letterman. July 26 the movie opened and it was a total bomb.

Chapter 4 The Journey p. 57 Gilda said that show business was like a bicycle, when you fall off you have to get back up, brush yourself off, and then get back on again. So Gene went back to England for ideas, and Gilda kept her dance schedule back here in America. Gilda tried to keep high hopes and kept telling herself that her drive, her energy, and her adrenaline could rise above whatever was bothering her mentally and physically. After her new doctor told her that her stomach problems were stress related, she decided to embark upon a new writing career. (p. 61) The gastroenterologist decided that she should have a sonogram. She started to think that maybe the Epstein-Barr virus was all in her head, but her legs continued to ache day and night. They had ruled out bowel problems, but her leg pains became more intense.

Gilda found it hard for the doctors to level with her because her and Gene were celebrities. Another doctor came along and confirmed that Gilda did indeed have the Epstein-Barr virus. She was afraid it would mean cancer. On September 22 nd she saw an internist in California. Her blood work came back normal. She decided to see an acupuncturist. (p. 67) Then something went wrong in her bowels and her stomach started to blow up like a balloon.

She had skinny arms and legs and a big protruding belly. When she saw the internist again he told her that she was literally full of shit. Chapter 5 The Hospital p. 69 Gilda s health continued to deteriorate. Her doctor informed her that her blood work now showed an irregularity in her liver functions tests. Gilda went back to the hospital and they gave her a CAT scan. Gilda stayed there in the hospital, and she was glad that somebody was finally taking her concerns seriously.

Well sure enough the CAT scan confirmed a malignancy. (p. 71) Surgery had to be done as soon as possible. They did the surgery and Gene said they got it all. Gilda had to stay in intensive care for five days after that though because she developed pneumonia and a fever of 104. From the minute she had checked into the hospital segments of the press were around trying to find out what was going on.

They had to change their names on the medical records, but none of this happened before the Enquirer got a hold of the story and made life a little more difficult for Gilda and her family. (p. 75) Gene eventually had to make a statement to the press though. He said that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, had had surgery and her prognosis was good. Gilda had several different doctors, which was good, because they were also there kind of like guards. Gilda spent three weeks in the hospital. She d had a major surgery to remove a grapefruit sized tumor, a complete hysterectomy, and a scraping of many of her internal organs. But amazingly she was in a dreamy state of happiness.

At the time of course she was on a very potent painkiller called Dilaudid which kept her stoned out and calm. They weaned her off the Dilaudid, but she had a really bad withdrawal. The first two nights she had sweats and chills. She became anxious, paranoid, on edge. Gilda said coming off that pain medication was the hardest parts of the recuperation. She got really emotionally attached to her nurses and talked to them a lot.

She also made friends with one of the patients there at the hospital and made bets with him on his favorite sports shows. Gilda said that while she was in the hospital, it never occurred to her that she might not live. (p. 77) Gene was very supportive, and was always bringing her gifts and news of the outside world. She said he was funnier then than she d ever seen him before. She also said that she could cry just as easily she could laugh though. Almost two weeks after her surgery, Gilda met up with Joanna Bull. Joanna was a psychotherapist who was there to talk to Gilda about cancer.

She was trying to help Gilda prepare for the upcoming chemotherapy. What Gilda didn t know at this time, was that she didn t just have ovarian cancer, it had spread to her bowel and her liver. The doctors didn t know that of course, they had removed all that they could see. They had never told Gilda that she only had a twenty percent chance of surviving and they wouldn t know anything for sure until two months into the chemotherapy, so he was carrying that around behind his smiling face. (p. 81) Gilda had her first chemo treatment, and it didn t seem any different than any other procedures she d had. After that she went on home. She hadn t seen her reflection the whole time she d been in the hospital, so when she got home, she was a little upset.

She weighed ninety-five pounds. This is when Gilda was hit with reality. She was forty years old and she realized she could die. Chapter 6 Cancer p. 86 Gilda s dad, Herman, was a really powerful businessman with an extraordinary personality. He had a zip in his step and a twinkle in his eye.

He was part of a huge family that he was the star of eleven brothers and sisters. He could barely write, but he knew about business and property, and he was one of those American success stories that proved you could make it on sheer ingenuity. By the 1920 s he was able to buy a brewery in Canada. Of course this was a time of prohibition in America, thanks to the eighteenth amendment.

No one in her family talked about that very much though. Herman Radner had a scrapbook of stories about himself. (p. 90) He turned his brewery into a free lunchroom during the Depression, and there were stories about that everywhere. However he had made his money, he spent the rest of his life giving back. When Gilda was twelve years old, her father went into the hospital for some routine tests. He had been having terrible headaches for several years. (p. 94) He was in the hospital only two nights, but as far as she was concerned, she never saw him again. They opened him up, found a malignant brain tumor that was too far gone to remove and closed him up again.

Besides the brain surgery he had a stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. The surgery and the stroke had changed his personality, his attitudes, and his moods forever. To quote Gilda It was too great and sudden of a loss of a person whom I adored, and who adored me. Everybody just kept on pretending that he was all right. Nobody ever said the word cancer. When her dad did come home, there was something in Gilda that upset him he would become emotional and well up with tears.

She went to camp and got called back home, where her brother met her (she was fourteen, her brother nineteen). Gilda s dad had died. But the house actually seemed more relax without the presence of illness. In 1974 Gilda s mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her mom handled cancer really well. When she was eighteen Gilda had a lump removed from her breast.

That same doctor was later in trouble for having performed many unnecessary operations on women. Gilda said she wasn t very surprised that ovarian was the type of cancer she got, she was always cystic and had had problems with that. Medical experts claim that even though our genetics can predispose us to cancer, it takes the addition of other variables like environment, including what we eat and drink and breathe, to generate the disease. Gilda just kept wondering what she had done wrong.

But she had used a lot of saccharin and she smoked. She went through an infinite list of things that could ve caused the cancer. She had wanted to be really skinny for a long time and went even so far as becoming bulimic. In the three years before her cancer though, she had began to overcome her eating disorders.

She had done many things in her life that were against life kinds of things though. Gilda was really unhappy that her Gilda the comedian would be synonymous with cancer. Chapter 7 Chemotherapy p. 105 When Gilda finally went home from the hospital she felt like the inside of a radio. She was having a lot of weird problems: besides the chemotherapy she was taking painkillers and on top of that her hysterectomy had created a lot of hormonal changes. Their friend Grace came to live with them to take care of Gilda and the house so Gene could keep working on his writing projects. (p. 107) Gilda said the night was the scariest time because Gene couldn t protect her from the cancer.

Three weeks went by and it was time for her next chemo treatment. Gene, Sparkle, and Gilda checked into the hospital and got the same room she had before. (p. 109) She was scared, but her hospital buddies made the transition a bit easier. Gilda really hated that the world was going by on its way and she was there just sleeping. When her hair started falling out she really spared out. Gene and Grace went running into the shower when she screamed (at seeing her hair falling out) and they told her it didn t matter, it just meant that the chemo was working. Gene had somebody bring her all kinds of different wigs.

She tried to dress different and wear different clothes, and when she went out she was even in style. But when she came home and took off her outfit she was still a cancer patient. Chemo number three was scheduled right before Christmas. (p. 119) They ended up not being able to do chemo because she had a bowel obstruction. They stuck a tube down her nose and throat weighted with a bag of mercury. When they later tried to pull it out, they pulled out the tube, but the bag of mercury was no where to be found. So now whenever Gilda had gas, little balls of mercury popped out.

So she went through this whole ordeal with trying to gather up all the mercury, and it just kept splitting into more little balls. Grace and her finally rigged something up with a paper cup to get the mercury out of the rug and the toilet. Chapter 8 The War p. 124 When Gilda was little she used to lay in bed at night and think about how lucky she was to be a girl and not a boy, because boys had to go into the army. Now here she was, fighting the battle of her life. Joanna encouraged her in one of her sessions to focus on the area of her cancer, the pelvic region and the peritoneal cavity.

As Gilda approached chemo number four, she began to feel quite well physically. Joanna and Gilda spend their weekly sessions attacking the hardships of chemotherapy. (p. 127) For about ten days after each treatment she felt edgy, weird, and nauseous. She also had tremendous mood swings. During the eleven or so days in between chemo treatments life got better.

For a while Gilda tried to fight the Alchemist over the chemo treatments but Gene let her in on how important they really were. For a performer like Gilda it was a depressing situation to be in. (p. 136) Before she became a celebrity, Gilda used to watch people, and even follow them. Now Gilda just felt shell-shocked and lonely. Chapter 9 The Wellness Community p. 137 Joanna brought Gilda some stuff about the place that she worked, the wellness center.

There were lots of women just like Gilda there. Lots of different kinds of people came to the meeting. (p. 140) Betty, one of the group leaders, said that if the statistics say that only eight percent survive a particular cancer, nobody ever knows who the eight percent are. The first time she had to speak she was so nervous she couldn t believe it. Here Gilda became Gilda Radner again, she was always there to lift the room back up. Gilda met up with a lot of people from her past. Grace had once told Gilda that it s not what happens in life, it s how you handle it.

After Gilda had been going to the wellness community for about two months, Gene and her went to a Friday night potluck dinner. Her friend Helen was there. (p. 152) The hardest part of committing herself to the wellness community and becoming friends with people was learning later that someone who had become close had died. Chapter 10 The Comedienne p. 154 Gilda was raised in Detroit but because her mom didn t like the winters, they would go down and stay in Miami Beach for a few months. Gilda and her brother had themselves into little balloon children. When she was ten years old, Gilda asked her parents if she could go to a private school. Gilda had quite a mouth on her back in 1965 when she was in college. (p. 163) In Toronto, Canada, Gilda began her professional career.

Her career continued in Canada, and she established herself as a comedienne. All during her career in Toronto, a certain young man named Lorne Michaels had his eye on her. She was one of the first people he hired for Saturday Night Live. In 1980 she married E. G. Smith, the lead Guitarist in the band.

Throughout her career, Gilda felt like the girl in Rumpelstiltskin. Her whole career was dedicated to making any situation funny, so she began to do the same thing with cancer. Her life had made her funny, and she was determined to find something funny about cancer. Chapter 11 What s Funny about It p. 169 Gilda decided that she wanted to have chemo number nine videotaped. She had had a lot of side effects with the last treatment. Finally when her last chemo treatment was over, it would be safe for people in Los Angeles to drive again.

She had to go back into the hospital though. Gene would sometimes sneak Sparkle in by putting her in a tote bag. The staff was none the wiser. (p. 175) In May of 1987, her chemo treatments were complete. Six months of all those chemicals had left her very tired. It seemed that not more than ever her head filled with anxieties. When chemotherapy is going on, you feel like you re doing something about the cancer.

When it s over, you wonder if the cancer is getting away with anything. Chapter 12 The Second Look p. 180 Gilda unfortunately had the type of cancer where even after the treatments are over, they open you up again to check you out. But as the month following the chemo went by, her strength returned. She could taste wellness. (p. 182) She felt so well that she got depressed because she had to go to the hospital. Joanna said to her that in a way it didn t matter what happened because she had learned to live with cancer.

She learned that life goes on and you can still feel well. If there was more cancer, Gilda could handle it. Comedy is very powerful. You are making people laugh.

Gilda was really nervous about that second look surgery. Well good news did finally come about. (p. 190) Everything was ok. Her doctor said the only danger with her type of cancer was that the cells can sometimes hide. But they wanted to do some more treatments just in case there was more cancer hiding there somewhere. Gilda felt like she was in the middle of some horrible endless experiment. Chapter 13 Delicious Ambiguity p. 193 When Gilda Live opened in Boston, in 1979, the morning paper had a review with a headline that said Gilda Radner has no talent Zip, Zilch, Zero.

It just goes to show you how uncertain that business is. Gilda s depression grew then came the fear. Panic set in that cancer was going to kill her. She had been depressed before depressed about her hair, her image, about not being able to have a child, about her body but she had never felt this sense of panic before. (p. 197) In discussing it with Joanna she was like a child stamping her feet and hating the fact that she didn t have control of the situation. The more Gilda pointed out the ambiguity the more Joanna protested that it was both a terrible and wonderful part of life: terrible because you can t count on anything for sure; wonderful because no human being knows when another will die. The only thing that is certain is change.

Gilda canceled her forty-first birthday party. Then Gene and Gilda had a fight. He said that she needed to get off of herself for a while that she expected for him to make everything be ok and he couldn t. Gilda decided that she could indeed handle these next few chemo treatments. (p. 207) They went back to France again and Gilda loved it more then than she did even before. The doctors decided to stop with the chemo and start with radiation therapy because they were afraid the chemo was going to disable her. Gilda just kept arguing with the man who was trying to save her life.

She went into a fit over this new six week plan. She ran into her bedroom screaming and swearing. The radiation therapy made Gilda really nauseous and anorexic. She had to take medication to make her sleep through the worst of it, then she would wake up in the evenings and she d be ok.

On December 11 Gilda had her last radiation treatment, and she took cupcakes to all her staff there at the hospital because it was near Christmas. It was finally over. Chapter 14 Life p. 211 Christmas 1987 was really a year to celebrate because they finally had something to be happy about. They were in the clear with the cancer. She ate and ate and ate. She gained about fifteen pounds right around Christmas. (p. 219) I do too every year.

Gilda did several photo sessions with different magazines, and she was pretty thrilled to see it on the racks and in doctor s offices. In February Gene and Gilda took a vacation to a health spa near San Diego. Gilda did fundraising stuff for the wellness community. She also did the Standing Show in March of 1988. Her friend Linda from the wellness center, had died, and Gilda was hurt very much from it. (p. 223) Gilda had to have her blood work done every three to four weeks. Then Gilda got a phone call from the hospital asking her to come in.

Gilda s CA- 125 had gone up. (Not a good sign. ) She had to have a CAT scan. Things were not good. Chapter 15 Alternatives p. 226 Gilda now realized just how in danger her life really was. Up until this point, Gilda had been so sure that the cancer was behind her. Gilda s friends were just as petrified as she was. Her life had become totally crowded with ironies.

She went to a luncheon some of the old SNL members had in her honor. (p. 227) She felt like a Martian there. When Gilda got back home she had a fight with Gene over her wanting to try alternative treatments. So here Gilda was with her recurrence of her cancer and she hated the world and all its inhabitants. During the first four weeks of the recurrence Gilda spent a lot of time lying on the floor looking at the ceiling. What she mourned most was her loss of joy, happiness, and her exhilaration with life. Gilda got really unpredictable for a while, and could be set off by anything.

As only she could do, she went nutty. The two carboplatin treatments had taken their toll on her energy. (p. 229) She felt a noticeable increase in the numbness of her hands and feet. Gilda decided that she didn t want to see that oncologist anymore because he didn t see her as recovering. Gene didn t really like the idea of Gilda not seeing a doctor so he kept looking.

Every day Gilda just got thinner and thinner. Meanwhile Gene was talking to this new Connecticut oncologist. All the time Gilda was unaware that her CA- 125 had risen to 245. Chapter 16 Change p. 247 Before they got married in France Gene and Gilda had met a Dr.

Greenspan, a great mind in chemotherapy. He was responsible for a lot of the medical advances in chemotherapy of his time. Gilda remembered him, and finally talked to him. She agreed to even go see him. He put her on new medicines. (p. 249) Gilda was still reluctant to start chemo treatments again.

The visit went very well, Dr. Greenspan gave Gilda an eighty-five percent chance of survival. The chemo visits were ok too, the nurses were great to Gilda. She said they made her feel like Cinderella with all her little friends dancing around her. Then Gilda grew terribly ill.

There was some kind of obstruction in her intestine but they couldn t open her up to get to t until they had gotten rid of the cancer. By September Dr. Greenspan decided to do something about Gilda s obstructed bowel. While she was in the hospital Gilda wore her little WWII that Harold Benjamin had given to her. I am not going to summarize the rest of the book, the last four pages, because it is completely composed of Gilda s hopes and her thinking she would make it.

She died in 1989. Well there s the book in a nutshell, now for my likes and gripes. I found only one grammatical error in the book. It s on p. 81.

I would lie there in bed and she would and she would talk me through a series of motions. telling me to tense my body in all different areas so that I could get a sense of the difference between being tense and being relaxed. The book was written mainly about her many bouts with illness, while here and there she included little every-day-life details. (the wedding party stuff, p. 25; her dog Sparkle p. 20; The book could be used as a medical reference guide she had so much stuff about medical procedures and terminology. (p. 1 - 270) The book was written in a very serious and solemn tone. She used very little humor. Of course the book was about her many bouts with illness so it was expected. The book seemed completely dedicated to how great Gene Wilder is, and Gilda s illness.

It s rather difficult to read this book and stay in high spirits. At every turn of the page you re thinking Does Gilda Radner have ANY good luck at all? The book was pretty well written in terms of medical conditions and the accurateness of her conditions pertaining as such to them.


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Research essay sample on Epstein Barr Virus Book Was Written

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