Showing
With Henrietta unconscious on the operating table in the center of the room, her feet in stirrups, the surgeon on duty, Lawrence Wharton Jr., sat on a stool between her legs. He peered inside Henrietta, dilated her cervix, and prepared to treat her tumor. But first—though no one had told Henrietta that TeLinde was collecting samples or asked if she wanted to be a donor—Wharton picked up a sharp knife and shaved two dime-size pieces of tissue from Henrietta's cervix: one from her tumor, and one from the healthy cervical tissue nearby. Then he placed the samples in a glass dish.
Wharton slipped a tube filled with radium inside Henrietta's cervix, and sewed it in place. He then sewed a pouch filled with radium to the outer surface of her cervix and packed another against it. He slid several rolls of gauze inside her vagina to help keep the radium in place, then threaded a catheter into her bladder so she could urinate without disturbing the treatment.
When Wharton finished, a nurse wheeled Henrietta back into the ward, and a resident took the dish with the samples to Gey's lab, as he'd done many times before. Gey still got excited at moments like this, but everyone else in his lab saw Henrietta's sample as something tedious—the latest of what felt like countless samples that scientists and lab technicians had been trying and failing to grow for years.
The details and actions in this section greatly shows what all she went through and had no idea. The doctor took samples and did procedures without her consent. If this was done today, the office would have been broke from the lawsuits that would have followed. This really grabs the readers attention and makes them think about how one would've felt if this was done to them.
Telling
Henrietta and Day had been sharing a bedroom since she was 4 and he was 9, so what happened next didn't surprise anyone: They started having children together. Their son Lawrence was born just months after Henrietta's 14th birthday; his sister, Lucile Elsie Pleasant, came along four years later. They were both born on the floor of the home-house like their father, grandmother, and grandfather before them. People wouldn't use words like epilepsy, mental retardation, or neurosyphilis to describe Elsie's condition until years later. To the folks in Clover, she was just simple. Touched.
Henrietta and Day married alone at their preacher's house on April 10, 1941. She was 20; he was 25. They didn't go on a honeymoon because there was too much work to do, and no money for travel. Henrietta and Day were lucky if they sold enough tobacco each season to feed the family and plant the next crop. So after their wedding, Day went back to gripping the splintered ends of his old wooden plow as Henrietta followed close behind, pushing a homemade wheelbarrow and dropping tobacco seedlings into holes in the freshly turned red dirt.
This part of the story tells us of her beginnings and how her life began with her husband. This part is critical for us to learn about her medical history prior to the cancerous cells. Medical history is pertinent for doctors to be able to best determine the cause of certain conditions and to see if patients are at a higher risk of developing serious conditions.
The impact of Henrietta going to the doctor was detrimental to both her and her family because they found the cancer and were able to give her a diagnosis. If she hadn't examined herself and paid attention to her body like she did, she never would have known what was wrong with her. Now her family knows that it may run in the family and to check themselves and go to the doctor if they discover anything abnormal. Present and future cancer patients now have better medications and treatments thanks to the research of her cells. There may be no cure, but there is a lot of people going to school, studying and researching different techniques and treatments to keep trying to find a cure or atleast to assist patients to go in remission.