Everybody needs to be hopeful to survive cancer. Hope is a very powerful element for survivorship. The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship discuss hope in the extract below:
Remaining Hopeful
Survivorship is the challenge faced daily by millions of
Americans who have a history of cancer. Current statistics note that nearly 10
million people are cancer survivors. Today, over 62 percent of all persons with
cancer are living 5 years after diagnosis. Survivorship, however, is not just
about long-term survival. Instead, it is about one’s quality of life from
diagnosis onward. It is living with, through, and beyond cancer.
As detection and treatments have improved, many types of
cancers have shifted from acute to chronic diseases, and some cancers are now
highly curable. The statistics are positive, but numbers do not really tell
very much about how persons with cancer survive—physically, psychologically,
socially, economically or spiritually. They do not tell us how people with a
cancer diagnosis learn to live with fear and uncertainty or how they manage to
be hopeful.
Summary Points About How People
Hope
¨
People hope differently. While hope is individualistic, your
own hope strategies are impacted by how your family of origin and your present
family use and maintain hope.
¨
Families tend to have similarities in the ways they hope, but
family hope constellations are not mutually exclusive. For example, you may be
religious and academic at the same time.
¨
Different types of hope constellations may lead to conflict
between the person with cancer and family members or friends. It also can lead
to conflict between the patient/family and the health care professionals who
care for them, because health care professionals also hope in individual ways.
¨
Most people have never thought about “how” they hope. They
just assume everyone hopes in the same manner that they themselves do.
¨
This does not refer simply to optimism or pessimism, but to
the strategies people use to look forward and for maintaining a positive future
outlook.
¨
Most health care professionals are not trained to do “hope
assessments” or to recognize different hoping styles. They often think only in
terms of “therapeutic” hope, and equate other hope with denial. This can have a
negative impact on your interactions with them and can make you vulnerable to
broken hope.
It
is important to think about your own hoping strategies and to be direct with
family, friends and professional caregivers about what is most helpful to you
with regard to using and maintaining hope. Never let anyone tell you that there
is nothing further to hope for or that there is no hope. There is always
something to hope for, and you, as an individual, have the right to determine
for what, when and how you hope.
View the full article here.
Take care
Allen Lai
