The meaning of the breast cancer/mastectomy experience

The purpose of this existential-phenomenological study was to understand the meaning of the breast cancer/mastectomy experience. The meaning described in this study was the structure or common pattern underlying the unique experiences of six women who had had mastectomies for breast cancer at least two years earlier. These women were my co-researchers. The assumptions of many different approaches to breast cancer and mastectomy in the literature were explicated and their limitations indicated. No previous exploration of the meaning of this experience was found. My own assumptions about meaning were drawn out of my own experience of breast cancer and mastectomy. The interview questions were based on these assumptions. There were two interviews with each co-researcher. In the first set of interviews each woman gave a detailed account of her experience, which was tape-recorded. In the second set of interviews my co-researchers validated the results of the analysis. The analysis of the transcripts of the taped interviews was done according to the method used by Colaizzi (1978) in Existential- Phenomenological Alternatives for Psychology, edited by Valle and King (1978). Forty-one themes were formulated and described; these themes were aspects of the breast cancer/mastectomy experience common to all of the women in the study. On the basis of the themes, an exhaustive description of this experience was written, as well as a condensed description of the essential core of the experience. The results show a clear pattern of spiritual growth through suffering, a pattern remarkable in its detail and symmetry. Healing involved a profound change in the person through the discovery of the meaning of her life as an individual and a human being. My description gives a more complete understanding of the breast cancer/mastectomy experience than any previous approach. It lays a foundation for further research of a similar kind. It also provides a perspective and an orientation for counsellors of mastectomy patients.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat