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Fading Away: The Experience of Transition in Families With Terminal Illness
Edited by Betty Davies, Joanne Chekryn Reimer, Pamela Brown and Nola Marten
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Death, Value and Meaning Series, John D. Morgan, Series Editor
ABOUT THE BOOK
You think cancer and you think death...you can't erase that. And, if
I didn't have a family, if it was just me, I don't think I'd even bother.
Mr. J., age sixty-three, with lung cancer. What would help this man
in his personal journey with serious illness and death? How do his intimate
interconnections and interdependence with his family influence his care?
How do practitioners support both him and his family as they face the imminent
death of both the patient and the family as they have known it? These are
the questions that plagued the staff of a regional cancer center and two
of the researchers as they initiated a new supportive care program. They
recognized that care of persons with cancer does not stop with treatment
or cure. They appreciated that care must be family focused. However, they
realized that their skills in meeting the needs of the families were limited.
This book comes out of an in-depth, qualitative study of the experiences
of twenty-three families in which one parent was dying of cancer. The study
attempted to better understand the impact of terminal illness on the entire
family system and sought to develop a theoretical framework that would
guide the assessment of and services to such families. As a result of interviews
with patients, spouses and their adult children over three phases of the
study, the process of "fading away" was identified and conceptualized in
terms of various phases which contributed to this process. The book is
not a research report but rather presents more generally the ideas that
developed from the study, with two purposes:
to increase the reader's understanding of particular experiences that families
encounter when dealing with terminal illness, specifically cancer. The
intended readership also includes families themselves.
to propose guidelines for care to be considered by practitioners working
with such families.
Many previous studies of cancer families have relied on the retrospective
reports of one family member, usually the surviving spouse. This study
purposefully sought to explore the fuller family experience by including
the terminally-ill persons and at least one adult child in the interviews.
In this regard, the book presents the experiences and voices of these family
members. The book also communicates that caring for and about a dying family
member involves physical, emotional and cognitive effort, or "work". The
book identifies the dilemmas and struggles of family members as they do
the best they can for the terminally ill patient.
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