UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

Glimpses of suffering through patients and family narratives: “I'm more than my chart”

When an individual gives life to his suffering by putting it into words he gives it a reality, a public existence that others may acknowledge and bear witness to. Communicating a private experience in this way, the sufferer may lessen the burden by sharing it.

The narratives will be divided into three parts: those of the patients themselves, those of their families, and the narratives of bereavement after the death of the patient. The themes of the patients' narratives are fear, loss, worry despair, vulnerability, loneliness, the sense of being trapped, and of imminent death. The families express the weariness and exhaustion of witnessing the decline of a loved one, the loss of their lives as they knew it and the burden of responsibility that giving care places on them. The themes that emerge from the narratives of bereavement look backward to the death, the suffering, the relief experienced, the guilt – all coming together to give some meaning to their experience and to provide a means of transition back into life and the everyday world.

Through these randomly selected narratives, this presentation will bring out an emerging kaleidoscopic view which turns into an organized picture – a myriad of pieces that form a design of regular proportions and regular events.