Dr Chatham called last night with the results of your biopsy, Brad. He’d like for you to check into the hospital tomorrow morning to run some additional tests. The preliminary results show that you have Hodgkin’s disease. It’s a form of cancer, and you’re going to have to put your life on hold for about a year while you undergo treatment.
Although the doctor said my chances for cure were high, I thought ‘But it’s still cancer!’ and I wondered if I would become some sickly kind of guy for the rest of my life. Fortunately, I’ve been far from sickly. I am, and have been for almost 20 years, in full recovery. Since having cancer I have been hiking and backpacking and bicycling all over the United States. I went to graduate school and am now a Professor of Social Work at the University of Southern California where I am researching how cancer impacts the lives of patients and their families. Most notably, three years ago I achieved a milestone that I thought for a long time would never happen due to the effects of chemo-therapy on my fertility. I became a father. Canadian pharmacy viagra – cheap viagra medications online pharmacy.
Life tasks and challenges in adolescent and young adult cancer survivors
The end of cancer treatment, returning to school or work, leaving home, dating, starting a family and/or a career and establishing regular and appropriate health care are all important stages of young adult cancer survivors’ lives. These life stages carry with them the potential for new understandings of cancer’s impact, new worries or concerns, and new challenges to physical health and abilities. It may be that at certain life transitions some survivors find their worries realized, find it difficult to obtain insurance or employment, recognize the limitations of their mental abilities or social skills, or understand the meaning and realities of chemotherapy’s effect on fertility. These life stages also may be times when the cancer experience becomes a personal resource that motivates survivors to help others, or instils in them an inner sense of confidence, purpose and knowledge about what is important in life.
Coping with cancer throughout survivorship requires an individual to continuously appraise cancer’s threat and potential for change as it appears and reappears in different forms at various times throughout the remainder of life (for example, as threat to reproduction; as discrimination when seeking insurance or employment; when starting a family; when certain environmental stimuli remind the survivor of his/her experience; when other friends or family members are diagnosed with cancer; if or when a recurrence or second cancer is diagnosed). Cancer survivors confront, on various occasions, reminders of their cancer and thus have multiple opportunities to experience either positive or negative feelings associated with the illness. They see television programmes and commercials with cancer-related themes, receive announcements regarding support groups, picnics and celebrations, hear through various media outlets about meetings with other cancer survivors and learn of family members, friends or acquaintances diagnosed with cancer. All these messages may evoke, or help survivors express and experience, a new or renewed sense of self. They may cause them to perceive, perhaps for the very first time, strong feelings related to having had cancer as a child or teenager.