When parents are confronted with something as fundamental as a cancer diagnosis for their child, it is generally assumed that sharing the emotional impact of it, in the form of talking about it with the partner, is helpful and necessary to cope as an individual and a couple. However, couple communication in the context of childhood oncology is often challenging. In this qualitative research, we aimed for a better understanding of how partners experience their couple communication during treatment of their child.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article is an autoethnographic exploration of college faculty grief. Over a career, a college teacher is likely to encounter deaths of current and former students. The rich connections that can develop in a faculty-student relationship can make for strong grief.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study explored the perspectives of child oncology professionals and parents about the attention professionals should give to the parent couple relationship during treatment of the child.
Methods: We employed a qualitative research design, framed within the approach of consensual qualitative research (CQR), gathering data from four focus groups with 20 professionals and from nine in-depth interviews with 16 parents. Thematic analysis of the focus group and interview data was done with MaxQda software, using two coders and member checks to strengthen confidence in the analysis.
A personal journey and a scientific challenge, this is an autoethnographic study about my own family's secrecy. I knew my grandfather had been a German prisoner of war during World War II. We all knew.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWithin Western cultural traditions, the idea that parents should talk about the death of their child with each other is deeply rooted. However, across bereaved parent couples there are wide variations in communication about their grief with each other. In this study, we explored the experiences of bereaved couples related to the process of talking and not talking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMeningiomas that progress after standard therapies are challenging with limited effective chemotherapy options. This phase II trial evaluated the efficacy of everolimus plus bevacizumab in patients with recurrent, progressive meningioma after treatment with surgical resection and local radiotherapy when appropriate. Patients with recurrent meningioma (WHO grade I, II, or III) following standard treatments with surgical resection and radiotherapy received bevacizumab (10 mg/kg IV days 1 and 15) and everolimus (10 mg PO daily) each 28 day cycle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe first conversation of a family about a family death is a neglected but potentially important topic. In a first conversation in James Agee's (1957/ 2006) novel A Death in the Family, the member who knows the most about the accidental death of another member discloses information selectively. The first conversation in Agee's novel suggests that communication and caring in the first family conversation about a death is attuned to family member emotions, particularly those of the family member considered most vulnerable, and that the aim is not a shared narrative that is true, but one that people can live with.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, the case is made that providing therapy to a client can be therapeutic for the therapist. Therapist change is not intentionally sought nor professionally delivered, but is from those client interactions experienced as healing. The possible mechanisms of change for the therapist include exposure of much about him- or herself being "on the line" in therapy, and the therapeutic relationship as a collaborative, two-way system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe concept of recovery following bereavement can be both useful and misleading. As a metaphor, the concept of recovery highlights some aspects of bereavement and obscures others. Bereaved people interviewed in 3 different studies typically did not bring up the term recovery so it did not seem to be a term that described their experience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurosurg Clin N Am
April 2008
Medical decision-making is based on benefit-to-cost analysis. Optimally, treatment obtains a high degree of benefit while minimizing the physical, social, and financial costs. The goals of the treatment of acoustic schwannomas are prohibiting tumor growth and alleviation of symptoms caused by damage to local structures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOtolaryngol Clin North Am
June 2007
Medical decision-making is based on benefit-to-cost analysis. Optimally, treatment obtains a high degree of benefit while minimizing the physical, social, and financial costs. The goals of the treatment of acoustic schwannomas are prohibiting tumor growth and alleviation of symptoms caused by damage to local structures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterviews were carried out with 16 South African Zulu widows. Much of what the widows had to say seemed like what one might hear from widows in economically developed countries, but there were also striking differences. All the widows lived in poverty, and for some their grief seemed much more about the poverty than about the husband's death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs part of a comprehensive interview study on African-American grief, the authors explored how racism is incorporated into narratives about a deceased family member. To the extent that experiences of racism are pervasive in African-American life and to the extent that narratives about a person who has died generally account for the life experiences, achievements, character, and challenges faced by the deceased, the authors expected narratives about a deceased African-American to deal with the person's encounters with racism. In fact, most of the 26 African-Americans who were interviewed spoke about racism in the life of the deceased.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSecondary analysis of data from 84 people in 2 interview studies shows that some bereaved people grieve actively while driving. The grief can be intense, even years after a death. Grief while driving may erupt spontaneously or be set off by a wide range of reminders.
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