Word: ordeal
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...women facing the trials and terrors of breast cancer, the worst part of the ordeal -- worse even than the possibility of losing a breast -- is the sense that the nightmare is not over even after the stitches heal. Breast cancer strikes 1 out of 9 women in industrialized countries and recurs in a third of all patients within five years of their initial diagnosis and in more than half within 10 years...
Picco passed the word to Perez de Cuellar, who was eager to wrap up the hostage ordeal before his retirement at the end of this year. The U.N. team decided to work on two levels. Perez de Cuellar mounted a high-profile diplomatic campaign, repeatedly visiting Iran, Syria and Israel to obtain official backing for Picco's veiled bargaining. The U.N. chief also sought advice from Brent Scowcroft, George Bush's National Security Adviser, who traveled to New York City to meet secretly with Perez de Cuellar, sometimes without the knowledge of Thomas Pickering, the U.S. ambassador...
...sister Peggy Say and with the State Department and other groups in the U.S. and Britain. It was not always easy to know what was best. "Our dilemma was that if we made a big fuss about Terry, the argument could be made that it would prolong his ordeal by increasing his value in the eyes of his captors," David recalls. "On the other hand, if we didn't make a fuss, that would contribute to poor morale on the part of Terry and the other hostages...
Although the American hostages were innocent bystanders in the Middle East, their agonizing captivity became the nation's ordeal. They were kidnapped only because they were Americans, men who represented what Iran and its Shi'ite proteges called "the Great Satan," and their fate became an issue for all Americans, especially for three U.S. Presidents...
Most Leningraders volunteered not for love of Stalin. It was their city they were defending -- the cultural center of traditional Russia, home of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevsky and Anna Akhmatova. The ordeal, however, required more than pride, certainly more than courage. The supply of food was erratic, and plummeted during the darkest moments of the war. On Dec. 23, 1941, for example, the whole city had just two days' supply of flour. At one point, rations were 1,087 calories for workers who had to man the city's strategic munitions plants, 581 calories for office workers, 684 calories for children...