Illness narratives
cancer
CANCER, DISEASE, FRANK, LENS, FOUNDERS
By telling one's story, one can give meaning to the seemingly meaningless. The AYA cancer survivors in this study were just about to establish a life of their own as adults when interrupted by disease. This seemingly senseless situation might be given a sense of meaning through the act of telling their stories to others. Narrative medicine is, according to one of its founders, Rita Charon, “medicine practiced with the competence to recognize, absorb, interpret and be moved by the stories of illness”.As our aim was to investigate the particular challenges encountered by the AYA cancer survivors, and how they viewed themselves in light of their illness experiences, we studied their stories of the self through a narrative lens. In these narratives, the teller is the AYA cancer survivor while the listener is the medical professional caring for them. By telling their stories, the AYA cancer survivors have chosen a certain narrative identity for themselves. These identities were investigated in this study by using the plots suggested by Arthur Frank.To the teller, the story is the bridge between their past self and their present self. A Canadian study investigated how illness narratives served to renegotiate identity among a heterogeneous group of cancer patients. It found that cancer survivors' illness narratives helped them negotiate their way through treatment regimens, changes to their bodies and disrupted lives. Thus, their stories became vehicles for making sense, not of an illness, but of a life.