Political Quotes

“Mr. President, almost every family in America has experienced the pain of a loved one who has been diagnosed with cancer. Today, I want to tell the story of the Grimes family from West Greenwich, RI. According to the Rhode Island Department of Health, nearly 4 in every 10 Rhode Islanders will develop cancer sometime during their life. In a State as small as ours, this means almost everyone has a friend or a family member who is affected by this disease. For those of us who have been touched by cancer, directly or indirectly, those are memorable emotions. In my family, both my mother and father died of cancer. Survival rates have greatly increased for many forms of cancer, thanks to new technology. But one form of cancer has not seen the same progress, and that is pancreatic cancer. Janet Grimes recently wrote to me about her mother Muriel who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this past April. Currently pancreatic cancer patients have about a 6- percent chance of living more than 5 years and about 75 percent die within the first year. These are dismal numbers. Janet has watched this cancer deeply affect her mother's quality of life. Janet wrote me that her 82-year-old mother was active, sharp, vivacious, and living in her own home in North Carolina until this disease struck. Since then, Janet has had to move her mother to Rhode Island to care for her, taking a leave of absence from her work.…”