Despite medical advances in oncology, society still believes that a cancer diagnosis means the end of life. Cancer is a loss of health and a life-changing disease, which represents a major turning point and changes many areas of a person's life. Initial shock, anger, helplessness and sadness are normal reactions to a sudden diagnosis and loss of health. These were studied in the Master's thesis. The aim of our research is to gain deeper insights into the experience of chronic cancer and the experience of emotions in adolescents and young adults. For them, we believe that more attention should be paid to their emotional state, due to the important life choices that are not so pronounced among paediatric and mature age oncology patients. Furthermore, adolescents and young adults experience additional difficulties and stress in dealing with a diagnosis that upsets their initial life plans. We highlight the psychosocial support that the participants mentioned as important in the course of the interviews. They feel that help is needed both immediately after diagnosis and after treatment, when they face the challenges of returning to their "old" life before the disease.
We focused on fear, which is the oldest and strongest emotion and plays an important role in coping with illness. It needs to be regulated and learned to be controlled. It turns out that fear is an unavoidable emotion in cancer, which can become more pronounced at certain times. Respondents to our survey talk about fear of cancer recurrence, while one participant experiences fear of cancer recurrence after childbirth. Based on the responses, we conclude that redefining notions of vulnerability and transience and reconstructing priorities are important in successfully coping with the fear of relapse. After such illness, all participants put taking care of themselves first.
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