Session 5: Pain and Cancer

1st Global Conference

Wednesday 17th February – Friday 19th February 2010
The Women’s College, Sydney, Australia

in association with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney

Pain and the Performing Musician: The Interplay of Culture, Cancer and Identity
Meghan Neaton
University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, USA

The burgeoning field of performing arts medicine has formally validated what professional musicians have known for years—playing hurts. However, this specialty branch of medicine has yet to examine the role of pain and performance as a result of severe illness. The present study began with a quantitative survey aimed at gathering data on physical symptoms of breast cancer before, during and after treatment. The numerical data led to the development of an interview-based qualitative research project identifying female musicians throughout the United States who have successfully completed breast cancer treatment (within the past one to five years). Although survey results (n>90) indicated nearly half of the women experienced significant pain, interviews with 38 survivors ultimately revealed a marked trend of minimizing treatment-related pain. Further analyses indicated a complex interaction among pain, the culture of the professional music world, and the musician’s own concept of self-identity. The fiercely competitive realms within the profession often encourage a “play unless you are dead” mentality. Moreover, many of the women who were interviewed stated that much of their own self-image and identity is derived from being a musician. The specter of pain to the performing artist represents a threat not only to the physical, corporeal body, but also to the cultural expectations and social world that a musician inhabits, along with her sense of self and psychological wellbeing. The act of denying or ignoring pain, then, becomes a powerful mechanism in achieving a sense of normalcy. The fundamental goal of this research is to provide a greater understanding of the complex and multifaceted role of pain in the musician’s life, not only for the musician herself, but also for music educators, medical professionals, and ultimately, those who suffer pain as a result of severe illness or disease.

Pain and Personal Experiences of Cancer: A Complex Intersection
Heather McKenzie
Australia

Personal experiences of cancer are inevitably affected by shared social understandings of the meanings attributed to cancer in any given society. In western societies, cancer is strongly associated with physical pain and disability, both of which are seen as part and parcel of most cancer illness experiences. Social attitudes in western societies to physical limitations mean that cancer experiences are inherently social experiences, for instance they can lead to the individual sufferer withdrawing from many social roles, responsibilities and commitments. Such effects can underpin a range of emotional pains, some of which may ultimately be more enduring than the physical effects of disease and/or associated treatments.

Drawing on several studies that have examined a range of personal experiences of cancer, this paper explores the meanings of pain in this context for individuals and their families. It is argued here that, although physical pain is frequently a significant dimension of cancer illness experiences, it is emotional pain that tends to dominate in personal narratives of living with cancer and emotional pain that lives on long after the experience of physical pain has receded. The paper elaborates on a range of different experiences of emotional pain, including fear, loss, anxiety, disappointment, grief and shame, and, where relevant, the relationship between these feelings and physical pain.

Modern medical science has achieved considerable success in relation to the control, or at least the management, of physical pain for cancer sufferers. The management of emotional pain does seem to be more intractable and less well understood. This paper explores the implications of this situation for people living with cancer.

Communication with Emotions: Use of Emotional Intelligence as Pain Relief
Tuna Yavuz
Communication Sciences Faculty, Anadolu University, Eskísehír, Turkey

Emotional intelligence is the capacity for recognizing our own feelings for motivating ourselves and for managing emotions effectively in ourselves and others. Emotional intelligence is related to four clusters that are self-awareness (the ability to read one’s emotions and recognize their impact), self-management (involves controlling one’s emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances), social awareness (the ability to sense, understand and react to others’ emotions) and relationship management (the ability to inspire, influence, and develop others while managing others).

The emotional competencies are not genetic and they can be developed. Emotional intelligence consists of specific skills behaviors and attitudes that can be learned, applied and modeled by patients to improve personal satisfaction and effectiveness. Emotional intelligence is also very important ability to exercise healthy self control and self management.

As a fact that pain is a source of intensive emotions and every patient handle the situation concerning the pain in different way. Patients have different feelings concerning the same type of pain based on their experiences or their psychological condition. Some patients can perceive their emotions and manage them easily. Some of the patients as a result of the intensive emotions can be very aggressive in their relationships. In other words this study will reflect the pain-patient communication from the perspective of emotional intelligence competencies. Consequently the purpose of the study is to establish a pain relief method based on the interviews of cancer patients and their relatives or their friends that have chance to observe the behavior changes of patients. Therefore, this study will be conducted with the participation of cancer patients and their relatives so as to determine the effects of the emotional intelligence competencies on quality of communication with self and others as a method of pain management.