Distinct Temporalities in the Breast Cancer Disease Process (original) (raw)
Related papers
Europe's journal of psychology, 2016
Previous research has agreed that meaning-making is a key element in the promotion of patients' well-being during and after a traumatic event such as cancer. In this paper, we focus on an underestimated key element related to the crisis/rupture of this meaning-making process with respect to the time perspective. We consider 40 narratives of breast cancer patients at different times of treatment, undergoing chemotherapy and biological therapy. We collected data through writing technique. We performed an interpretative thematic analysis of the data and highlighted specific ways to signify time during the different treatment phases. Our central aspect "the time of illness, the illness of time" demonstrates that the time consumed by illness has the risk of becoming an illness of time, which transcends the end of the illness and absorbs a patient's past, present, and future, thus saturating all space for thought and meaning. The study suggests that narrative can become ...
The Experience of the Passage of Time as Narrated by Women With Breast Cancer: A Qualitative Study
Women's Health Bulletin, 2015
Background: Breast cancer is closely linked with the quality of passage of time by the patient. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore the experience of the passage of time in narratives of women with breast cancer. Patients and Methods: Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 8 women after mastectomy. A thematic method based on the qualitative research was used to explore the meaningful themes. Results: The results obtained revealed that the story of passing of time involved two fluctuation modes. At the primary stages of encountering breast cancer the patients experience a chaotic time in which the first reaction was denying and disavowing the fact that they were plagued by an unexpected threat. Following this stage, the patients begin to progressively base their experience on creativity and religious coping strategies called the calmness period. Conclusions: Passing of time is of fluctuation type. Creativity and religious context have main roles in resolving the psychological problems of women with breast cancer. Therefore, policy makers must consider planning to enrich religious beliefs in women with breast cancer.
"From chemo to chemo"-the temporal paradox of chemotherapy
Supportive Care in Cancer, 2021
Purpose To uncover the experience of time in women undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer. Methods A combination of consensual qualitative research and Giorgi's descriptive phenomenology. Results The key phenomenon found and pre-reflectively organizing the patients' experience was the temporal paradox of chemotherapy-a sense of both acceleration and deceleration in between chemotherapy sessions that desynchronizes patients with the time of others. Conclusion The experienced paradoxes concentrating around the timings of the chemotherapy treatments are of particular relevance for supportive care. It is particularly important to acknowledge the disturbing effect of the cyclical nature of chemotherapy.
Social Science & Medicine, 1994
Abstractancologists encounter the uncertainty of time horizons in their patients' lives. Although American oncologists are given a cultural mandate to instill hope in the therapeutic narratives they create with patients, uncertainty leads them to expressions of time without horizons or of time with highly foreshortened horizons as they seek to create for patients an experience of immediacy rather than of chronology. The distinctiveness of the American pattern is highlighted through comparison with Japanese exemplar cases and stories of therapeutic practices in oncology. Concepts drawn from narrative analysis of temporality and the construction of the therapeutic plot are employed.
A Concept Analysis About Temporality and Its Applicability in Nursing Care
Nursing Forum, 2012
TOPIC. Concept analysis of temporality. PURPOSE. To develop a comprehensive definition of temporality applicable to nursing care. SOURCE. Published literature. CONCLUSIONS. Temporality is a central component of our experience of the world. Phenomena such as the passage of time, time cycles, the trajectory of aging, transitions toward something, something being, and life as a limited time are integral to human experience. Temporality could be seen as lived time, and as such it is subjective time as opposed to clock time or objective time. The temporal dimensions of past, present, and future constitute the perspective of a person's temporal world. bs_bs_banner AN INDEPENDENT VOICE FOR NURSING 245
The rhythm of chemotherapy and cancer patients’ time perspectives
PeerJ
Background While it is well known that illnesses such as cancer modify the experience of time, the impact of the rhythm and length of treatment on patients’ time perspectives remains unknown. Methods A short version of Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory and Transcendental Future Perspective Questionnaire as well as a demographic questionnaire on a convenience sample of 259 patients (66.8% female, mean age 52.36) with various cancers and undergoing chemotherapy with different frequencies (1, 2, 3 weeks) and mean time in treatment 23.4 months. Results The temporal perspectives mean scores of cancer patients are: positive past 3.69, negative past 3.13, present hedonism 3.08, future 3.77, transcendental future 3.40. Patients tend only slightly to lose faith alongside the course of oncological treatment regardless of their age (ρ = − 0.210, p < 0.01). The frequency of chemotherapy mildly differentiates temporal perspectives of patients regarding present hedonism and transcendental f...
Time considerations are fundamental to risk, with conceptions of time located in the future intrinsic to experiences of uncertainty and considerations of the self. The quality and quantity of such future-time is not often problematised within risk research, with time usually taken for granted as a standard continuum. Focusing on the experiences of cancer patients, with limited prognoses but who were partaking in or who had recently been involved in drug trials, this study explored how participants attempted to cope amidst unusually elevated levels of vulnerability and uncertainty. Within our analysis of qualitative data from 13 in-depth, narrative interviews, the heightened risk and reflexivity experienced by participants illuminated features of future-time which are often overlooked. Time emerged as a complex, multi-dimensional, paradoxical and highly pliable notion. Uncertainty, though problematic for patients, also facilitated agency where risk information was reinterpreted in a more favourable sense and hope was harnessed to extend future-time through the envisaging of the possible. Hope was thus an important tool in the management and construction of future-time, while future-time in turn created an imagined space towards which existing hopes could be oriented and within which new hopes could be located. The imagining of positive futures, or the bracketing away of negative futures, enabled time to be construed pragmatically, with resources for such constructions rooted in the social contexts of the patients. Tensions and paradoxes were regularly apparent within the multiple future-times which patients worked with. Cognitive and emotion work was necessary for those living ‘in-between’ such contrasting futures.
Marking Time: The temporal experience of gastrointestinal cancer
Contemporary Nurse. , 2012
This study uses Heideggerian Phenomenology to explore the lived experience of gastrointestinal cancer and treatment with a curative intent. Eighteen patients and carers engaged in in-depth, conversational style interviews. Four recurring themes that spoke of the temporal significance of the cancer diagnosis included a recall of intricate details around significant dates; waiting; a changing pace of perceived time and being-towards-death. Fear and anxiety around cancer progression and recurrence underlie these themes. The meaning of time altered so that it was experienced as a precious commodity to be consciously managed in the context of their changed present and future. Being-towards-death was constituted of fear, but allowed the person to redefine meaning and purpose in their life. These insights will better prepare health professionals to guide discussions and provide perspective for the concerns of patients and families, particularly in relation to waiting times for tests and cancer interventions.
Conceptualization of Disease Timeline Predicts Posttreatment Distress in Breast Cancer Patients
Health Psychology, 2004
A sample of 69 breast cancer patients was assessed before and after cessation of treatment to determine the predictors of posttreatment distress. Patients were assessed approximately 6 weeks before completing chemotherapy treatment, 1 month after completing treatment, and 3 months after completing treatment. Results indicate that timeline beliefs are related to distress: Patients who conceptualize their cancer as a chronic or cyclic illness are more anxious, depressed, and worried about a recurrence than patients who conceptualize their cancer as an acute illness. These findings hold true even while controlling for disease stage. The way patients conceptualize their illness appears to be more influential in determining levels of posttreatment distress than objective indicators of the likelihood of recurrence.
Transitional experiences of women with breast cancer within the first year following diagnosis
Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2010
Aims and objectives. To explore the experiences of 12 women with breast cancer, involved in a large longitudinal qualitative study designed to explore the experiences of people with cancer within the first year following diagnosis. Background. To understand experiences of breast cancer further as a chronic illness, this study draws on biographically informed and embodied perspectives of chronic illness. Design. Qualitative, longitudinal study. Method. Interviews were conducted at three time-points within the first year following diagnosis with 12 women with breast cancer. Drawing on the constant comparative method, a descriptive and thematic approach to data analysis was adopted. To move beyond the descriptive level, we drew on the concepts of biographical disruption and embodiment to further explore and explain the disruption that was evident in these women's lives as a result of their diagnosis. Results. Two key concepts emerged from the data: 'Identity Transition: moving between health and illness' and 'Making the Transition to the Future? Living with breast cancer and moving on'. Identity transition emerged as a result of the changes and adaptations participants were required to make as a result of their diagnosis. Making the transition to the future emerged as a result of the challenges these women faced living with cancer.