Meshing Gears

Abstract

Adolescents with cancer and their parents have to deal with the challenge of returning to their pre-diagnosis social life. The purpose of this study was to describe the subjective lived experiences of Taiwanese mothers and their adolescents who had completed cancer treatment and were returning to school. Eight Taiwanese mother-adolescent dyads were recruited by purposive sampling. Core themes were extracted using phenomenological method and dyadic analysis. Findings were metaphorically captured by the theme “meshing gears.” The mothers and their adolescents were initially like 2 gears spinning alone, side by side due to experiencing different distress related to their social roles. To move toward a normal and healthy life journey, the mothers and their adolescents worked together as a well-tuned machine. This phenomenon is similar to gears meshing without friction to keep moving forward together. Our results suggest that health care professionals should provide follow-up care and interdisciplinary school reentry services to adolescent cancer survivors to improve their quality of life.