Psycho-Social Problem: My Time with Cancer

Introduction: Two months before my 16th birthday, I was preparing for a weekend with my mom to choose a dress for my college fresher ceremony. When I went to bed, my body ache, headache happened, so I took some pain killer and went to sleep. After being in so much pain that I was unable to sleep, I walked from my room to the kitchen to get a glass of water to take more medicine, and that’s when it hit me. My physical problems were removed but unable to sleep due to psychosocial problems. Because, I have diagnosed cancer. My aim is to evaluate the emotional distress in cancer patients, including depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

Method: Home visit by volunteers and enumeration of the problems as discussed by the patient and their families. Simultaneously I visited my oncology clinic and try to relate my problems with them.

Result: Analysis the following data and identify these main problems.

Patient problems: Pain, vomiting, respiratory distress, fatigue, etc. Our volunteers visited terminal cancer patients and their families in our areas.

Family problems: Inability to match work life with the care of the patients. Adverse attitude of neighbors and local peoples.

Psychosocial problems: Lack of awareness of the neighbor of local people about cancer and palliative care resulting in isolation of the family.

During my treatment I faced severe stress, fear, physical and mental problems. I was able to overcome all the problems except one. That was social isolation. Neighbors, friends, relatives all shunned me, because of my cancer. They believed cancer is contagious.

Conclusion: We believe that if we are able to continue our program for a long enough periods the suffering of the cancer patient and their families might be resolved to a large extent over time. Social effort to raise the awareness of neighbors and local people through discussion and other audio visual method (i.e. poster, leaflet, slide presentation, etc) will be break the social stigma for cancer.