Care and the older person with cancer

Care of older people with cancer has received relatively little attention in the literature and this area of caring practice has yet to be firmly established in professional discourse. References to the increasing proportion of older people in the population are common, as are references to the problems associated with old age, whether these are seen as medical, or as inevitable consequences of natural processes. Health care for older people has sometimes been reported to be routinized or basic, and as taking little account of individual perspectives, and the 'discourse of senescence' represents a tendency to understand old age and the aged body in terms of degeneration and deterioration. Here, it is argued that older people are often portrayed as separate and diminished, and have little control over the definition of themselves as users of health services. This represents a constraint upon the possibilities of caring practice. Divesting ourselves of the 'discourse of senescence' may be a fundamental part of developing caring practice for older people with cancer in the future.