天津市河东区高考英语阅读理解冲刺试题(4)

天津市河东区2014高考英语阅读理解冲刺（4）及答案

阅读理解

“Mom, I have cancer.”These four words catapulted my son and me on a journey that lasted two years. On that dat I felt a wave of paralyzing fear.

Scott was the oldest of my four children. He was 33 years old and a successful assistant principal at SamRayburn Hifht School in Pasadena, Texas. He and his wife Carolyn were busy raising four active children. Scott was 6’2’’, weighed 200 pounds and had never been sick a day in his life.

A few month earlier a mole（痣）on his neck ha d changed color. “Dr.Warner called,” Scott said that spring morning. “It’s melanoma.（黑素瘤）” I tried to comfort him, naming all the people I knew who had survived skin cancer. Yet, I felt small tentacles of fear begin to wrap around my chest.

Our next stop was MDAnderson, the famous cancer hospital in Houston. Scott had surgery at the end of May and was scheduled for radiation treatments over the summmer recess. “There is an 80 percent chance it won’t reoccur,” the doctors said. At the end of summer, all his tests came back negative and Scott was back at school in the fall. However, in December, Scott discovered a lump on his neck. It was examined and the result came back “malignant.（恶性的）” We now re lized that Scott fell into the 20 percent category. I could feel the tentacles tightening around my chest. He entered the hospital for an aggressive treatment, a combination of interferon and interleukin. After five months of treatment, he had radical surgery on his neck. The test results were encourging, only three of the 33 lymph nodes（淋巴结） removed were malignant. We were very hopefull.

For the next six months, Scott’s follow-up visits went well. Then in October, X-ray revealed a spot on his lung. The spot was removed during surgery and the doctors tried to be optimistic. It was a daily battle to control the fear and panic each setback brought.

In January, he was diagnosed as having had a “disease explosion.” The cancer had spread to his lungs, spine and liver and he was given three to six months to live. There were times during this period when I felt like I was having a heart attack. The bands constricting my chest made breathing diffi cult.

When you watch your child battle cancer, you experience a roller coaster of emotions. There are moments of hope and optimism but a bad test result or even an unusual pain can bring on dread and panic.

Scott was readmitted to the hospital for one last try with chemotherapy. He died, quite suddenly, just six weeks after his last diagnosis. I was completely dest royed.

I had counted on those last few months.

The next morning I was busy notifying people and making funeral arrangements. I re member having this nagging feeling that something was physically wrong with me. It took a moment to realize that the crushing sensation in my chest was gone. The thing every parent fears the most had happened. My son was gone. Of course, the fear had been replaced by unbearable sorr ow.

After you lose a child, it is so difficult to go on. The most minimal tasks, combing