Coping Strategies Among Pediatric Cancer

‘“Cancer is like a home invasion, once it has invaded your life you will never feel safe again”’ (Adal yn's... 6). Cancer wipes out what a family knew before cancer; it wipes out their version of normal and replaces it with something that can not be controlled. When childhood cancer takes a hold of the family and never lets go. While going through cancer, it is important that a family sticks together and builds each other up through this difficult time. Childhood cancer affects everyone it comes in contact with, but it mainly affects the family, including the child suffering from cancer, as well as the parents or caregiver and siblings.

Cancer has one of the biggest effects on the patients mental health but also the patients loved ones and friends. It is one of the hardest things to get a grip on when the doctor tells someone that they have cancer and a fifty-fifty chance of making it. "The disease can bring many changes-in what people do and how they look, in how they feel and what they value" (Dakota 4). It makes people look at the world and their lives in a different way, valuing now what they took for granted and seeing the bigger picture in every scenario. It is something that no one can actually brace, even after the doctor tells them. Through it all though, the person must remain strong and optimistic because the cancer can affect the person's moods and in return affect the outcome of the person and the chances of their making it

Being diagnosed with cancer can be very scared because the person that is been diagnosed is not prepared to receive the tremendous news. When Henrietta find out that she had cervical cancer, she did not tell anyone and went on with her day as if nothing had happened. Rebecca Skloot states that Henrietta told “Day and the children not to worry,” “A int’ nothing serious wrong, she said““Doctor’s gonna fix me right up” (Skloot 31). In the article “Keeping Cancer a Secret” author Dr. Mikkael Sekeres ask his patient “how are they [children] dealing with your diagnosis” (1). The reason he chose to not tell was that this son was away in duty on

Dana Farber wrote about the Harvard Cancer Center, an NCI-designated comprehensive Pediatric cancer center to build upon the collective talent and resources of the Harvard cancer research community. She talks about her experiences working with childhood cancer. Ferber is aimed at providing a better understanding of adolescent health issues and developing new interventions to improve the health for adolescents. She is also initiating and studying new methods of delivering healthcare to at-risk youth and designing new curriculum for teaching adolescent health to health care providers.

Not only does cancer diagnosis affect the cancer patient, it affects everybody in their life. The feeling you have can be overwhelming for everybody in the family. One of the greatest effects of cancer can be your marriage(4). You experience so much anger, anxiety, and sadness. In some cases, it can make you have a stronger relationship with your wife or husband. You also can bet you will see a change in your childs’ behavior. Young children are used to getting all of the attention. When they aren’t getting attention due to one of the parents being sick, they will act out. It can make the older children realize and appreciate the sick parents more. It’s very important to talk with your children about what is happening in the family with the cancer diagnosis, and how important they are to one another. You and your family members may need to get therapy to help deal with everything you are going throught. It can put a strain on all your relationships. It is exhaustion, physically, mentally, and

The importance behind this health issue is that major advances in medicine haven’t significantly improved survivor rates nor have medical advances reduced the number of cancer cases per year in children under 18 years of age (Curtin, Minino, Anderson, 2016).“Congressman McCaul is a father of five and knows that every parent’s worst nightmare is their children receiving a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. Growing up, his childhood best friend lost his battle to cancer. It wasn’t fair then and it isn’t fair now. Congressman McCaul founded the Childhood Cancer

Pediatric oncology nurses are given the unique opportunity to make connections and build long-term relationship with their patients and families. Standard treatment protocol for many childhood cancers span over the course of years, with long-term surveillance and follow up visits after treatment has finished. Due to their patient’s chronic diagnoses and the acuity of their conditions, pediatric oncology nurses work in an environment of increased stress. The high stress environment puts the nurses at an increased risk for compassion fatigue; so it is the responsibility of both the nurse, and the institution to be aware of the symptoms and to effectively manage the condition should it arise. Without proper attention to the stress

Childhood cancer is two of the most devastating words any parent can hear regarding their child. A child that was diagnosed with cancer in the early 1960s rarely survived and typically led to death. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital understood this concern. When the hospital was created the childhood cancer survival rate was less than 20%. Today, through research and discoveries the rate has raised to 80%.

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is driving the way the world comprehends, treats and annihilations adolescence tumor and other life-undermining illnesses. St. Jude has the world's best survival rates for probably the most forceful youth malignancies, and medicines designed at St. Jude have helped push the general adolescence tumor survival rate from 20 percent to 80 percent since we opened over 50 years prior. St. Jude is attempting to drive the general survival rate for youth disease to 90 percent in the following decade. St. Jude openly shares the achievements we make, and each youngster spared at St. Jude means specialists and researchers worldwide can utilize that information to spare thousands more youngsters. Families never get a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, lodging or nourishment – on the grounds that the only thing the families need to do is to stress over is helping

Ph.D. degree acquired authors, Ronald L. Blount, Ronald T. Brown, and Natalie C. Frank, conducted a study focused on predictors of the overall psychological adjustment in children who are battling cancer. They concentrated on anxiety and depression levels and how the child externalizes behavior. There were 83 children who participated in this study of ages ranging from 7 to 18 years. After obtaining parental and child consent, the researchers proceeded to give each

This charity programs have traditionally been built on three parts; reducing the financial barriers to treatment, support systems to soften the family stress that’s linked with transplantation or cancer treatment, and developed with the opening of the Kids Beating Cancer Pediatric Transplant Center. Kids Beating Cancer Pediatric is an exceptional facility providing treatment for children needing transplants to survive their disease. Kids Beating Cancer removes barriers to treatment for children with cancer, leukemia, and sickle cell. Parents seek their services in need of a marrow or stem cell transplant providing support for the families as they facing a challenging situation towards a cure. They also provides the pre-transplant testing

A pediatric oncology nurses care for children with cancer. They administer medications, record observations, communicate with doctors and parents and perform diagnostic tests. Dealing with terminally ill children on a regular basis can make this job challenging and emotionally draining. However, despite the difficulty of the role, helping children and their families by making them as comfortable as possible and offering emotional support can be professionally

As established in the National Cancer Institute, “Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide for children and adolescents in America, accounting for more than 91,250 children that lose their lives to this disease” (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is not considered a terminal illness, but more of a chronic illness because of the intense treatment that the individual has to endure. As a result of this treatment the chances of survival for children suffering from pediatric cancer has increased around 80 percent. The increment in the survival rate has made it possible for many parents to not have to go through the acceptance that they are about to lose their child to a terminal illness, but have coping strategies that will make them adapt to the fear of the reoccurrence of that illness. This illness has a great impact on the patient as well as the family because not only do they have to adapt to this illness physically, but also mentally. Research has shown that there are both short term and long term effects that come into effect when the child is both in treatment and also years after the treatment. The type of cancers that these adolescents have to endure range from leukemia, brain tumors and other cancerous tumors that have appeared in recent medical studies. These tumors can either be benignant, an acute case that is non-cancerous or malignant, a cancerous case that will need intense treatment over an extended period of time.While many would say there is more of a

This period in a human’s trajectory dictates largely the development of basic skills they will utilize through adulthood and beyond. The development of motor skills, language, other modes of communication, social and emotional skills and cognition begin during this time. Strong secure attachment and trust of primary caregivers can give a child strong foundations and positively contribute to the health of the child over the course of its life into adulthood and further on. Infancy, however, is also when the highest cancer incidence occurs among children, specifically during the first year of life (CANCER AMONG INFANTS). Very young infants are not able to verbalize nor give conceptualize and thus give meaning to the word “cancer.” They do, however, understand routines that include feedings, diapering, bathing, naptimes and playtime with their primary caregivers (DOI 10.1007/s10643-014-0647-4). Given the kind of treatment necessitated by a cancer diagnosis, an infant’s relationship building, attachment, and the routines succeeded normally or as a part of the attachment process to primary caregivers (mother, father, etc.) can be severely disrupted by their medical care. The anxiety felt during periods of separation, the pain of constant blood drawings to assess vitals or chemotherapy drug administration, and constant exposure to a variety of people and abnormal situations can negatively impact a child’s ability to cope, a benchmark usually reached between three and six months of age (Miller Lecture). The treatment of cancer also necessitates procedures including MRIs and CT scans, which typically involve a restriction in movement and thus exploration. The kind of exploration that is limited is but one of the developmental milestones of an infant, between nine and twelve months, its restriction can correlate negatively with developmental status (Miller lecture,

An important concept dealing with this moral burden affecting the parents’ decision-making is confronting the reality of the diagnosis. An overwhelming sense of helplessness affects parents when their child is diagnosed with cancer. Parents reported being initially shocked, scared, frightened, in despair, upset, and overwhelmed (Stewart, Pyke-Grimm, & Kelly, 2012). They question whether their child’s illness is because of genetic heritage or an unhealthy lifestyle. Furthermore, they