Giving meaning to illness and death
End-of-life approaches in online stories by adolescents and
young adults with cancer
In recent years, adolescents and young adults
(ayas) with cancer and survivors of childhood cancer
have started to organize as a collective in Europe. In this context,
associations have included in their websites stories by young people
diagnosed with cancer or who have gone through the disease. In this
study, four of these websites (two in Spanish and two in English) are
analyzed to obtain information on how ayas approach the
subject of death in their stories. From the total of 128 studied
stories, explicit references to death appear in 30. Discourse
analysis will show us how ayas give meaning to the end of
their own and their friends’ life.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Methods
- 3.Results
- 3.1By category
- Previous experiences of cancer death in family and
friends
- Cancer is not death
- Risk of dying
- Life-threatening event
- Dead hospital fellows
- Losing the fear of dying
- Second chance to live
- Acceptance of death
- 3.2By time of narration
- Diagnosis
- Treatment
- Disease-free survivor
- End-of-life
- Overall experience
- 3.3Cultural differences
- 4.Discussion
- 5.Conclusion
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Notes
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References