Time and Bodily Changes in Advanced Prostate Cancer : Talk About Time As Death Approaches

• The disease trajectory of living with incurable cancer is characterized by, increasing bodily deterioration and problems. In this paper, we have focused on the change in temporal awareness as manifested in the narrations of two men with hormone refractory prostate cancer and, skeletal metastases as they approach death. The two men participated in in-depth research interviews during the last part of their lives, sharing a similar disease trajectory with increaseing bodily change and decreasing physical function. Both died a lingering cancer,related death. The first and last research interviews were analyzed using a discourse analytic method. Findings show that the temporal awareness in the interviews changes as the illness progresses and death approaches. In the last interviews, the present is flooded with bodily problems; the past and the future are hardly present except for the future beyond the mens own deaths. Pain.,fatigue, nausea, and other symptoms figure largely in this change, and there is no time for much more than attending to bodily needs in a present that is dominated by problems. Here, the importance of alleviating bodily problems once again becames paramount, and two questions are raised: Is the often reported withdrawal from life, when death is imminent, a physical necessity rather than a psychological one, and is it possible to free time from, the time-consuming problems of the present by means of a more concentrated attempt, to alleviate these problems?

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Annan medicin och hälsovetenskap -- Övrig annan medicin och hälsovetenskap (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Other Medical and Health Sciences -- Other Medical and Health Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Interviews

longitudinal studies

palliative care

prostatic neoplasm

signs and symptoms

MEDICINE

MEDICIN

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)