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Experience of an adolescent living with and dying of cancer
1Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre and Department of Pediatrics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada. flavelle@dal.ca
Objective:
To provide a unified description of an adolescent's experience of living with and dying of cancer.
Design:
Qualitative analysis using phenomenological methods.
Setting:
Izaak Walton Killam Health Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Patient:
A 15-year-old boy who was diagnosed as having osteosarcoma in 2003 and died of his disease 1 year later.
Intervention:
Analysis of his 90-page journal that spanned 3 months just before his death.
Main Outcome Measures:
Identification and clustering of key themes to capture the essence of his experience.
Results:
Five main themes that surfaced during analysis of the journal were adolescent development, escape from illness, changing relationships, symptoms, and spirituality.
Conclusion:
A single case study can provide valuable information in a field such as pediatric palliative care in which the patient's perspective may be difficult to access or ascertain.
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