PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT OF CANCER

The announcement of cancer creates a psychological crisis: excitement, difficulty concentrating when we need to understand complicated medical information and distressing. This is all that this shock can awaken other previous painful experiences.

In addition, cancer treatments are often as scared as the disease. Feel free to ask questions at the doctor, you need to be informed to accept treatment and participate in treatment choices that affect you.

Express your feelings with the care team, your parents or your friends. Speaking allows us to release emotions contained, said his hopes, his concern ... If you do not succeed, the intervention of a psychologist can help you manage the distress associated with illness. You can better tolerate your treatments and thus better meet your cancer. Some patients prefer to trade with people who have gone through the same ordeal that is the purpose of discussion groups and associations.

If there is no psychologist in your place of treatment and you do not know any discussion groups, please contact the National League Against Cancer. The word "cancer" scares you In cancer than elsewhere, comparison is not right. It was not "the" cancer, has cancer, very different depending on its location (colon or breast for example), its seriousness, its extension, the treatment he requires.

The trauma of the diagnosis is often the only common point between patients. One may have a cancer in childhood or in the latter part of life, he can be cured by a simple operation or require lengthy treatment. Cancer of that organ, the colon or lung, may indeed have forms, treatments and an evolution quite different.

→ How to find landmarks? Ask specific information to your oncologist, have them repeat yourself. Do you support a close to your appointment if you can. You can discuss and compare what you heard. Ask your GP, it is essential support. It is the same nurses who are familiar with the disease.

Anxiety leads to multiply efforts and this results most often contradictory information even more disturbing.

Be careful not to be blinded by the cancer experience of a relative cancer media coverage of any known person. There is no model of cancer treatment. Indeed, beware of informants zealots who want to tell "their" cancer, the misfortunes of others or make you "sparkle" of miraculous treatments without side effects. National League Against Cancer publishes pamphlets, many hospitals have their own documents on the salaries they can help you.

Do you feel responsible for your cancer?

Why, and especially why me? It's easy to arrive at "what have I done to deserve this, to have triggered this?".

For several years, psychological explanations are "fashionable" and spend too easily for possible causes of cancer. The stress, bereavement, stress, anxiety, everything is put into play to understand the inexplicable: cancer. There is no evidence, no scientific validity to these interpretations of cancer, except that they relieve.

Why? They help give a face to the enemy incomprehensible. We want to do something. Lacking any guilt, it is easy to incriminate oneself and to blame the mismanagement of his life. Yet for cancer, there is no need to add guilt.

Each of us has the right and need to make history of her cancer: "It's because ..." it's a way to tame it.

This is not to deny the psychological effects of the disease. We must strive to find effective psychological defenses to confront the disease, for a better life. It improves the quality of life and ability to better care, psychological suffering being sometimes as cruel as physical pain.
Interviews with psychologists can find words to express the trauma, anxiety, emotions difficult to monitor and recover a better psychological functioning. The influence of support on the quality of life of patients is recognized. Talking is an effective weapon should not be overlooked in a time lived as a true fight against cancer.

There usual psychological consequences of cancer?

Of course, everyone reacts with its nature, history and knowledge of the disease. We find nevertheless felt common in sick people. Can describe: • A psychology of crisis: emotional reactions difficult to control, anxiety, insomnia, inability to comprehend or refusal to hear information that scare. These reactions are normal.

This period is shorter or longer depending on the people. Care by health department, repeated information, the beginning of treatment and intervention of a psychologist can most often a gradual adaptation. • alterations of the self-image. Most treatments cause changes in the body, scars or sequelae in surgery cases, hair loss, weight loss or weight gain, effects of chemotherapy, hormonal changes always painful.

Even people who have little or no visible marks on their bodies feel changed, sometimes foreign to themselves for a longer or shorter. It is useful to overcome the shyness that prevents him from speaking. Psychological work allows you to discover yourself despite the changes. • The time of uncertainty. The significance of time changes for the patient. He was first marked by the treatments. People feel so dependent on the hospital.

After treatment begins the difficult management of uncertainty about the future: remission or cure. Each individual patient wants or would like to know "his" future. Relapse of a relative or bad news in the media can maintain or bring forth anxiety. She reminds patients of their vulnerability. It takes time to live normally, to find oneself. The surroundings, even the doctors do not always adequately take into account the expression of this anxiety. We want to reassure all costs, sometimes with the opposite effect.

It is often more effective to let each person express his fears and find, over time, a different relationship with life, but something different times richer. • Family relationships. The family, as the patient will be affected by the diagnosis and often feel the same emotions, not always to the same time. Think about that because it creates psychological shifts tougher. Never forget your loved ones in their way, are also disturbed even if they do not show.

The important thing is to speak simply of your cancer when you feel able to do so. Some of your relatives will react sometimes difficult to understand or accept. Some will minimize any cost seek to reassure you, others panic, sometimes to temporarily distance. What you ask them to respect you, he should try to tolerate it from them.

The enemy is cancer and not your family, even if the world tends to seem dangerous or hostile because of him. In such times of crisis, they may indeed be irritable, anxious and aggressive. Do not hesitate to share your emotions and your anxiety. And, mirroring, understand overreactions around you.

You have trouble communicating with your loved

With your spouse, you may have trouble communicating, it should. What we saw is divided so painfully hard in the early days, sometimes especially with those we love most. Have the courage to say "I'm afraid I am ill, console me," the courage, as requested quiet if you need it. With older parents or fragile, take your time but in any case, it is better to tell the truth. If you're away, ask a relative to inform them calmly.

Their doctor can be a good interlocutor. Often guilt "I do not want to hurt their" annoyance to adopt the right solution. You will almost always surprised that honesty does not hurt. Lying, even to protect, prevent any communication.

Children, however small, must be informed with simple words. They always know what is meant to hide and imagine the worst case of silence. Is us that we protect by not telling them not, they need to comfort their sick parents, to participate in what happens in their family. Tell them if you need to be hospitalized, tell them goodbye because nothing is more frightening than a departure unanticipated aggravation that has not been announced.

Of course, every family has a story, a child mode of reaction, but never forget they have a right to know what happens to one of their parents. If you fear too much, ask your spouse, a relative who knows them, talk to them. Can say "you know Mom or Dad is sick and tired and asked me to explain what is happening. It is important to preserve their habits in these situations, separation from their environment if they are not indispensable, aggravate their distress.

With adolescents, more importantly, even if sometimes they do "as if" they were not concerned. Some will even be unpleasant, arrange to be rejected. Is often an indirect way of expressing their distress, and this will be more difficult to manage when they are not well informed. They are sometimes confusing, uncomfortable. A threat for a parent with whom they are apparently in conflict, may feel guilty. They often fail to ask questions. Go to meet them and show them that you need them of course without asking them too.

Parents are made to be strong and protect their children. The illness of a parent pushes all roles and all the family reference. Again, talk simply facilitates a gradual adaptation. It takes time to live together this event. Close friends can also be valuable intermediates.

What a group of speech and what can you bring? Many sick during or after illness, expressed the need to share with people experiencing or have experienced the same event. Is the group object word to be that place of sharing and listening. It speaks, we say what we can not say either at home or the doctor. Mutual understanding gave rise to a solidarity which enables each other to rebuild.

These groups, which meet regularly, are led by professionals including a psychologist. They are organized by the National League Against Cancer in a number of departments.

Discussion groups of relatives are also organized. Having one of his suffering from cancer is a difficult test: it is invested with a heavy emotional burden and we often feel isolated. Gather to share this event, speak of their difficulties, learn how not to get his own anguish at its close, how to cope with his guilt, how to manage family life often disrupted by this event. This suggested that groups speaking relatives. They are led by a psychologist and a doctor.