Young members of the remission society
cancer
CANCER, FRANK, REMISSION
The participants in this study illustrate both the difficulty of recovering from cancer and the extent to which the transition to early adulthood is affected by their illness. Though the participants have reached a “new” normal life, the restitution plot becomes problematic when the survivor is still battling the side effects of cancer therapy. Considering how the restitution plot has become the preferred narrative of institutional medicine and powerful interest groups, and has thus come to shape the culture of illness, survivors may feel there is nowhere to turn when other plots prove possible. Medicine still tends to view people as either sick or well. Arthur Frank, however, argues that being a survivor of cancer is less about holding dual citizenships than it is about living with perpetual chaos in a so‐called remission society. In a remission society, sickness and health constantly blend into each other.AYA cancer survivors are particularly vulnerable. A similar vulnerability is more poetically addressed by Remarque in his novel about World War I, 