Losing and Regaining Sense of Control: A Cancer Patient's Interactions With Healthcare Professionals

By jointly telling the story of one of us, the authors, we highlight how supportive healthcare relationships can support a patient's sense of agency and open pathways for restoring a sense of control in the midst of serious illness. Drawing on personal experiences of living through cancer as a patient or a caregiver in Finland led us to explore how a sense of control can be lost and gradually regained. Drawing on our shared reflections and experiences as collaborating autoethnographers, we analyzed Satu's, the first author of this article, changing sense of agency and control, focusing on five key episodes over the 18 months following her diagnosis. As we revisited these episodes together, we identified how impersonal and one-sided communication within the healthcare system contributed to her loss of a sense of control. Over time, however, through more dialogic, respectful, and participatory interactions with healthcare professionals, she found ways to reclaim control and agency-not just in navigating illness but in shaping life beyond it. Our collaborative analysis offers new insights into the evolving dynamics of control, agency, and patient-professional interaction. We contribute to the literature on illness management by foregrounding relational, contextual, and socially constructed understandings of control. By illustrating the importance of patient-professional interactions, the study highlights the potential for rebuilding a sense of agency and control through supportive healthcare relationships.