Dying with cancer

[Dying with cancer: Hollywood lessons].

The study attempts to understand how dying from cancer is portrayed by five movies produced in Hollywood between 1993 and 2006. Based on the cultural studies and their post-structuralism version and supported by the notions of discourse and subjectivity, as proposed by philosopher Michel Foucault, we suggest one of the possible readings of the movie picture corpus. We assess how the movie pictu...

Dying From Cancer

Medical oncologists and patients with advanced cancer struggle to discuss prognosis, goals, options, and values in a timely fashion. As a consequence, many patients die receiving aggressive treatment potentially inconsistent with their fully informed preferences and experience increased symptom burden and distress. The goals of patient oncologist communication include exchanging information, bu...

Experience of an adolescent living with and dying of cancer.

OBJECTIVE To provide a unified description of an adolescent's experience of living with and dying of cancer. DESIGN Qualitative analysis using phenomenological methods. SETTING Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. PATIENT A 15-year-old boy who was diagnosed as having osteosarcoma in 2003 and died of his disease 1 year later. INTERVENTION Analysis of his 90-pa...

Dying with dignity.

Communicating with the dying.

Non-verbal signals are very subtle: they are socially learnt and can be as confusing to a foreigner as an unknown language. We watch a person's face and observe slight changes of expression in the eyes or mouth. We note the making or evasion of eye contact and whether the movement is natural or forced. We unconsciously see the embarrassed wave of a hand and hear a change in the timbre of the vo...