They told me "You have breast cancer" ???

Each year almost 200,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States alone. Moments after each of these hundreds of thousands of diagnoses are given by physicians, the women on the receiving end suddenly leave the healthy world and become patients–and run face-toface into a major life crisis. “How bad is it, and what are my options?
What are the side effects of the best treatments available? Will I ever be the same again, or will I be just a part of who I am now? How will my husband or partner think about me? Will I live to see my kids grow up? Will I be able to spend future holidays with my grandchildren?” These
are only a few of the questions that these women ask themselves and their physicians after they learn they have breast cancer, even when it is caught in the earliest stages.

DONT READ THIS IF YOU ARE NOT A BREAST CANCER PATIENT ...!

Individuals dealing with breast cancer experience continual psychosocial stressors including fears of recurrence and concerns about physical deterioration during adjuvant therapies such as radiation and chemotherapy .Inadequately coping with these demands may lead to depressed affect, hostility, reduced use of social supports, substance abuse, impaired immune functioning, and possibly accelerated disease progression.


Although initial research suggested that severe emotional reactions to cancer diagnosis and initial treatment are common among patients with breast cancer, more recent work suggests the importance of thinking of cancer-related distress along a continuum of adjustment ranging from mild distress to severe symptoms of depressive and anxiety disorders. Today, most consider the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer to be a crisis, but the experience is spread out over the period of a year for most women with early-stage cancer (i.e., women with a favorable prognosis). However, some women may experience the diagnosis and treatment as more traumatic and display symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder or other anxiety- and depressive-related conditions. In many women, anxiety and depressive symptoms persist for 4 to 5 months, yet even at subclinical levels they can affect their quality of life after surgery
for breast cancer. In addition to affecting quality of life, cancer-related distress may cause additional visits to physicians’ offices and to hospitals, interfere with treatment decision making, and disrupt ongoing curative and adjuvant treatments—which can increase costs and increase the burden on caregivers, resulting in caregiver burnout.

So how do you cope with "You have breast cancer thing"?

From my experience I've seen many women use particular coping strategies, such as positive reframing or relying on religion, and those who have social support from family and friends.

Importantly, each of these coping strategies can vary according to contextual factors such as the woman’s religious affiliation and marital status. For instance, we know that the use of religion as a coping strategy seems to most effectively buffer distress among woman who are Protestant. Women with high levels of social support from their spouses and female family members may experience less distress after surgery than more isolated women; however, certain types of support (e.g., material or instrumental support) from certain sources (e.g., female family members) may be detrimental. We have also learned that social support, especially support from female family members, tends to erode over time among women who remain distressed about their breast cancer for a long time after the diagnosis. Thus, numerous complex factors are involved in determining just the right mix of coping strategies and resources for helping a woman adjust to breast cancer.


In addition to clarifying these complexities, these findings highlighted the value of using psychosocial intervention, particularly group-based cognitive– behavioral intervention, to facilitate the adjustment process during the period after diagnosis and initial treatment for breast cancer. Cognitive coping responses and positive thinking are a prime example. If an intervention could teach women to use coping strategies such as positive reframing and to maintain a more optimistic outlook, they might experience less distress after diagnosis and surgery. These findings also highlighted the need to focus on maintenance and enhancement of social contacts. We reasoned that interventions teaching skills such as assertiveness could assist women in telling family and friends which of their actions were helpful and which were not. We also decided that a group-based intervention format was crucial because the group itself could serve as a source of emotional support. A supportive group should help women resist the urge to withdraw from other sources of support and aspects of normal life.

Thus using behavioral techniques to help increasing or maintaining social support and changing the outlook toward the future is essential.


HOW TO ADJUST TO A DIAGNOSISOF BREAST CANCER?

before discussing that let me tell you - please continue reading this if you are a woman..... 'coz it may help some one if not you..

You need to have a clear idea about the disease. Because you are not going to die in a day. You need to live. So does every one.
The next post will give you an idea on the thing.