Word: cancers
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Being told you have cancer is obviously news from hell. Hearing some time later that the cancer is advanced - that it's spread to another part of your body and will almost certainly kill you, perhaps within months - is worse still. Which is why it requires no great effort of the imagination to believe the statistic that at least 3 in 10 people who receive the latter diagnosis spend much of the balance of their life in a funk. "The fear that I have with this cancer," says Shinta, 48, whose disease has spread to her sternum and the lining...
...first is whether SEGT improved the women's quality of life by staving off negative feelings and encouraging them to embrace the time they have left. On this level, neither the researchers nor most participants doubt that the therapy works. The more contentious - and intriguing - question is whether cancer patients who undergo SEGT might live longer than those...
...SEGT comes from the new field of psycho-oncology, which explores the role the mind might play in both causing and treating cancer. It remains on the fringe of medicine, and insofar as it delves into causation is likely to remain so: while stress has been shown to compromise the immune system, there's no strong evidence that these changes are significant in the development of cancer. But as a treatment adjunct, psycho- oncology is creeping into the mainstream. Self-help groups for cancer patients at all stages of the disease are common in Australia. But SEGT, the brainchild...
...Melbourne trial. A dozen or so Thursday Girls still meet weekly at a Salvation Army center in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. Sitting around the kitchen table at the home of member Jeanette, three of them explain how the therapy helped them after the shattering diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. "I was spiraling down," says Sally, 47, whose cancer reappeared in the original site and on her spine eight years after she thought she'd beaten it. "I'm coping enormously better now, purely and simply because I can go to this group, this sanctuary. You can say what you like...
...some significant benefits from SEGT," says project coordinator Brenda Grabsch. The women learned to mourn their fate, then "rise above these feelings to discover humor and creativity," says former Thursday Girls therapist David Kissane, now chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City. By showing the women how to approach dying with courage and how "to say goodbye in poignant, meaningful ways while living to the end," Kissane adds, SEGT is worthwhile even if it turns out not to prolong life...