Psychosocial Oncology Essay

“It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die at the end” (Edson 6). Margaret Edson, throughout her play Wit, compares ways of viewing the world through the eyes of Dr. Vivian Bearing, a middle-aged professor of seventeenth-century poetry at the university. Recently diagnosed with stage four metastatic ovarian cancer, she undergoes treatment at a major research hospital and knows the prognosis is not good. Over the course of the play, Vivian takes the audience to various scenes in the past and present that illuminate her achievements in the world of scholarship and show what happens to her as she is treated with aggressive chemotherapy for eight months. As one might expect, her outlook on life and death, heavily influenced by the works of John Donne, change as the treatment progresses.

The dying wish of Paul Kalanithi was for his family to make sure his book got published after his death. Kalanithi started writing When Breath Becomes Air after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. The context, audience, author, and subject all reflect the urge to share knowledge before death.

Illness at a Metaphor by Susan Sontag discusses how metaphors complicate diseases or syndromes of multiple or unknown causes. Sontag says that the most truthful way to describe illnesses is without any influence of metaphors, to keep it as pure and scientific as possible (Sontag 3). However, metaphors are a part of everyday life and it is nearly impossible to escape the use of metaphors to describe illnesses.

Terminal illnesses can strip even the most advocate life loving people, rendering them a depressed shell and unwilling to continue any further into the deep pits of despair that life has allocated to themselves. The cruel and unusual punishment to such enthusiastic people leaves them, “…permanently incapable of functioning in any dignified human fashion” (Andre, Velasquez 2). In the case of Matthew Donnelly who had, “… lost his nose, his left hand, two fingers on his right hand, and part of his jaw” to cancer, hope of relief was nowhere to be found, high nor low (1). The extreme pain had stripped every bit of joy from Donnelly who typically, “loved life” (1). Donner suffered, “lying in bed with teeth clenched from the excruciating pain,

A. Attention Getter- I will never forget the day my mom called me and told me that she had found a lump in her breast. She immediately went to get a mammogram, and sure enough, it was breast cancer.

The biopsychosocial model of health care allows medical practice to be understood completely in terms of biological, psychological and social factors. The model suggests that every illness can be explained and treated by an interaction between these three factors. The model was proposed by George L. Engel, the Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, where he challenged the previously prevailing medical model, called the biomedical model, and argued for the introduction of a biopsychosocial model. The biomedical model had viewed illness purely from a pathophysiological perspective, suggesting that every disease could be explained from a biological standpoint. It ignored a ‘mind-body connection’. Health however, is not simply limited to biology. “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not simply the absence of disease or infirmity” as defined by the World Health Organisation.

In the US, cancer is the second major cause of death. Cancer is the uncontrolled division of somatic cells caused by defective cancer cells. Usually, when cells divide, they begin to form a layer. Normal cells will experience contact inhibition, where cells can cease to replicate once there is no more space for it to inhabit. However, cancer cells cannot control their division. As a result, these cells form a clump that is commonly referred to as a tumor (neoplasm), especially when the immune system is malfunctioning. Tumors can be benign, harmless and easily taken out or malignant. Malignant tumors block tissues and organs from functioning with each other. Once cancer cells become metastasized, they break away from a host tumor. These free-floating

The diagnosis of cancer can have an enormous impact on a cancer patient mentally. A cancer diagnosis can be shocking to some patients. "After you

When you're dealing with cancer, you'll have to let a great deal of new people into your life. For example, you will meet a team of medical specialists and even other patients. Cancer is not something you can go through alone, be ready to let these special people into your

Almost every individual has had an experience where they or someone they know have battled a disease. No matter what the disease is, the patient typically is associated with negativity; however, in this memoir by Suleiki Jaouad, the author places a different view on cancer. Suleiki Jaouad developed (AML) acute myeloid leukemia, due to a bone marrow disorder, at the age of twenty two. Throughout her story, Jaouad discusses the impacts of developing cancer and how she coped with her disease. Her most precious asset was her long, wavy hair, and she knew once she began her chemotherapy treatments that she would not be able to keep her long hair. She describes how she asked her doctor two questions after she was diagnosed, and one of those being whether or not she was going to be able to keep her hair. She then begins to inform the reader how she felt losing her hair and what the impact was in her life. She explains how every time she went in public, which was not often, she received stares because people associate baldness with cancer. That’s how society is. She wants to be more than an individual with cancer, this is when she

In the book titled “THE LAST LECTURE” by Randy Rausch, the protagonist of the story is Randy Pausch and the antagonist is pancreatic cancer. One page 4 chapter 1 it states that “That week, however, I got the news: My most recent treatment hadn’t worked. I had just months to live”. In that quote, it started a conflict that was not only alarming to his wife Jai and to his three kids, Logan, Dylan, and Chloe but alarming to himself to know that his time was coming to an end, and he is approaching his deathbed. Randy and Jai decided to take their concerns to a psychotherapist, Michele Reiss, She specializes in helping families when one member is confronting a terminal illness. Jai felt very disquiet as she was in the psychotherapist room because there is a concern Jai has that has been Pestering her mind all day, and that is that Randy has to fly to Pittsburgh the day before Jai’s forty-first birthday which happens to be the last birthday he will be spending together as husband and wife. I believe the major conflict in this story is the fact that Randy only has months to live and he is leaving a big family behind who need a husband and who needs a father figure in their life.

Care givers: caring for a family member or friend with a physical or mental illness can be stressful, exhausting, both mentally and physically, and creates a physical and psychological strain for the care giver over a period of time. The psychological well-being such as depression and stress, are frequent consequences of caregiving. The age, socioeconomic status, and the availability of informal support that caregivers have access to greatly affect their own health and well being.

I remember it as if it were yesterday... the hard, palpable lump in my right breast... the sense of urgency in my doctor 's voice... the flurry of appointments, exams, biopsies and ultimately the stage 3 diagnosis of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. Everything culminated a single point... this was the beginning of a journey that would change me forever. The ensuing double mastectomy, chemotherapy and years of reconstruction were prolonged, violent assaults to my very core and body.

Ron was a young school going boy, whose family was living the American dream. His dad had retired from army and had a life assured income. His mom left the job to be with her family. They moved on to Canada, US. They bought a house which had a pool. Dad started a second career in an information technology company. Mom got another job. Little Ron was soon enrolled at Little Whingin Academy. Ron looked excited to go to school. However, Ron, was becoming increasingly easily fatigued, and had fine bruises that had nothing to do with ordinary playground activities. In, 1999, May, he was diagnosed with the most advanced stage of neuroblastoma which is a rare form of childhood cancer, with very little time left to live. The Dream of happy life was

Self-Regulatory Model (SRM) [1-4] is a cognitive-affective model that highlights the existence of the emotional component as well as the cognitive component; both of these components alter the perception of disease threat and influence each other. This model emphasizes the active role of the patient and his / her concrete action towards the change of behavior, which will allow effective interventions. According to the Self-Regulation Model, there is a simultaneity ratio between the cognitive and the emotional processing of the disease threat [4].