Cancer survivorship reimagined: A qualitative study on evolving interpretative repertoires of cancer and survivorship using participant-produced photography

A picture of hope: From the perspective of adolescents with cancer-A phenomenological-visual qualitative study

This study aims to investigate the phenomenon of hope in adolescents diagnosed with cancer and examine adolescents' lived experiences of hope. The study was conducted between November 2022 and March 2023. The study used a phenomenological-visual qualitative research design with 20 adolescents in the pediatric oncology ward. The purposive sampling method was used in the study. Data were collected using "Descriptive Characteristic Form," "Semi-structured Interview Form," "Drawing Technique," and "Mutual Storytelling Technique". The adolescents were instructed, "Let us draw our hopes," and asked to draw pictures. Each adolescent was interviewed about the drawings and asked four semi-structured questions. Audio recordings of the interviews were made and transcribed. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used in the analysis of the data. Two main themes and four subthemes were identified in the study. Metaphorical and conceptual context was included in the theme of symbolizing and linking hope. Two subthemes, facilitators and barriers, were identified in the main theme of rooting hope. The study sheds light on hope experiences in adolescents receiving cancer treatment and guides healthcare professionals.

Reconfiguring time: optimisation and authenticity in accounts of people surviving with advanced cancer

Increasingly, people live longer with advanced cancer, despite having no prospect of full recovery. Ongoing survival is owed to early detection and effective disease management, yet experienced as highly precarious. In this article we explore how cancer chronicity brings into effect a pre-occupation with time, what time is to people with advanced cancer, and what socio-cultural norms inflect everyday practices. We analyse 20 interviews conducted in Queensland, Australia with 11 participants with advanced cancer, to trace the intersections of what time means, what people do with time, and what time feels like. Drawing on scholarship on the moralities around ill health, we discuss how awareness of time emerges in cancer chronicity and raises moral questions on how to live well. Here, imperatives of optimisation (urging people with advanced cancer to make the most of limited time) intersect with imperatives of authenticity (marked by emphasis on how to live one's own best life). These dynamics reveal expressions of living with advanced cancer in morally viable ways. Such ontological processes have implications for the lived experience of people with advanced cancer, their families and oncological care.

Surprise Reveals the Affective-Moral Economies in Cancer Illness Narratives

Emotions, like joy and sorrow, feature in illness narratives, dramatizing stories of becoming: sick, well, controlled, in control. However, brief emotions, such as surprise, have received limited analytic attention in cancer illness narratives. Drawing on 20 interviews with 11 participants with diverse cancer diagnoses, along with the 455 photographs they produced for this study, we address the complex interactions between discourse, societal expectations, and perceptions in moral-affective economies. Tracing the emergence, deployment, and silencing of surprise provided an avenue to explore connections between affect, morality, advocacy, and philanthropy. We show how surprise works to deny uncertainties couched in individual risk, and situate cancer causation within the logics of anticipation, (re)producing socio-cultural etiology narratives. Attending to surprise reveals how some cancers are situated as individual responsibilities, with restricted access to compassion and collective resources. Thus, we interrogate the affective-moral economy underpinning cancer illness narratives, and surprise's pivotal role in its analysis.