Balancing exercises: Subjectivised narratives of balance in cancer self-health

Abstract

Having a 'balanced lifestyle' is often promoted as one way to manage the competing demands of contemporary life. For people with cancer, those demands are often multiplied, particularly when they use self-health approaches that seek to bring together an array of biomedical and complementary and alternative medicine therapies and practices. Yet, how balance is used in this complex healthcare milieu and the affects it has on experiences of illness are less well understood. In order to follow the polyphonic narratives involved, two case studies of women with breast cancer who used cancer self-health approaches were analysed. By exploring different modes of subjectivation in the case studies, balance was found to affect experiences of health in contemporary society in multiple ways. In particular, it was one way through which participants saw themselves as being able to maintain a critical engagement not just with their healthcare, but with their self and life.

Potential factors that influence usage of complementary and alternative medicine worldwide: a systematic review

“…Improving physical and emotional well-being, and quality of life were further reasons for using CAM in patients with cancer [ 50 , 63 , 65 – 72 ]. The cancer patients also reported using CAM to reduce side effects of CM [ 33 , 45 , 65 , 66 , 69 , 73 – 80 ]. Western populations in both the general and condition-specific populations were more likely to report combining CAM and CM helped them [ 33 , 54 , 74 , 81 – 84 ].…”

“…The cancer patients also reported using CAM to reduce side effects of CM [ 33 , 45 , 65 , 66 , 69 , 73 – 80 ]. Western populations in both the general and condition-specific populations were more likely to report combining CAM and CM helped them [ 33 , 54 , 74 , 81 – 84 ]. Likewise, condition-specific populations in some Asian and Middle East countries perceived that CAM complemented CM [ 63 , 85 – 89 ].…”

“…Meanwhile dissatisfaction with CM, affordability of CAM and easy access to CAM were more frequently reported by patients with other chronic illnesses ( p < 0.05). Patients with cancer, whilst accepting the efficacy and safety of CM, may use CAM in order to complement the efficacy of chemotherapy and/or reduce its unpleasant side effects (36% of publications in cancer populations) [ 33 , 34 , 45 , 63 – 67 , 69 , 71 , 73 – 79 , 88 , 122 – 124 , 139 , 152 ].

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Polyphonic narratives: The mixing of Alcoholics Anonymous and relapse prevention in stories about recovery and relapse

“…It serves to shed light on how stories are built up by fragments from different discursive resources, and from this perspective narratives are seen as constructed around personal experiences, while at the same time “no story is entirely anyone's own” ( Frank, 2012 , p.35). Polyphony in narratives has in prior research mainly been studied in relation to illness narratives, and has shown how people embrace rather than suppress contradictory plotlines and conflicting values when narrating experiences of illness and treatment ( Ezzy, 2000 ; MacArtney, 2016 ). As pointed out by Törrönen (2022) , illness narratives and narratives on substance use carry similarities as they often relate to forces that impact the narrators’ self-understandings.…”

How wide is the Goldilocks Zone in your health system?

“…Yet people's engagement with their self-care and the health care system can also demonstrate to them the limits to which they can affect their own health and life. 19 It is usually the clinicians and health care system, and not the individual patient, who have the authority or means to provide access to treatments and other resources. 20 Third, state regulation is increasingly present in the micro-management of clinical encounters.…”