The cancer patient and his environment

The cancer patient, in addition to suffering organic ills, diagnostic procedures, intensive therapeutic procedures and not uncommonly special care, must create a significant compensatory mechanism in order for him to fit his serious disease into the environment in which he lives. However, due to a variety of factors, he can abandon his struggle which leads to despair due to his awareness of the fatality with which cancer as a disease is characterized. On the other hand, the non-medical environment can produce either covert or overt social isolation of such patients through the formation of infectious fantasies, blaming the patient for the disease due to, for example, unhealthful lifestyle, which is also a defense reaction of healthy persons in the face of the unconscious threat which cancer as a disease poses. Moreover, there are entirely practical tendencies of distancing oneself from a patient, primarily of a material and moral/ethical character, which once led to the patient\u27s abandonment. Even negative family tension, by which those close to the patient experience foreboding concerning the fatal result of disease, will he clearly sensed by the patient. The role of the medical worker as presented is immense