It is generally known that most women pass through a trauma phase following their diagnosis of cancer. This emotional state usually lasts fro that time until they are treated for the cancer. What is not generally known is how long this phase – that is, the phase from diagnosis to complete treatment lasts – lasts. In fact usually lasts long, because in a woman in whom the cancer was detected at an early phase, the treatment could last up to a year. And that is even a favorable prognosis.
The major problem comes when some women experience the trauma more than others, suffering sever post-trauma problems.
This problem has a direct influence on the way women begin to feel about themselves. They may begin to feel a huge inferiority complex, and there are reported cases where women begin to lose touch with their feminine side. In extreme cases, some women totally withdraw form having sex. However, it has been discovered that in women with early cases of the cancer symptom, when they expect that they will become free of the cancer, they generally have a more positive outlook and suffer lesser emotional stress.
Don’t consider this to be a racist comment, but it has also been found that women of various ethnicities show different reactions to the problem of cancer. It has been reported that Hispanic women show more predisposition to emotional shock than other women. However, African American women tend to be more controlled in these matters.
The personality and physical attributes of the women involved may also have something to do with the way they handle their emotional problems. Research is currently going on to look into the issue.
For instance, women who are generally optimistic about life tend to be more emotionally controlled than the natural pessimists. In fact, this particular quality in the women has been used to predict the level of stress a woman is likely to experience during the year she will be required to undergo surgery.
It has been found that optimistic women accept the state they are in as something they cannot change, and hope for the best whereas the more pessimistic of the bunch generally sink into depression because the situation tends to discourage them from any expectation of hope.
Furthermore, disengagement as a technique has proven helpful in women who are pessimistic. It has really been found useful in cases where the women developed these emotional problems at the onset of the surgery, say in six months into the surgery. The discovery from this study is also similar to the one taken from patients who were closely watched before they underwent biopsies and even down to three weeks after the completion of the surgical procedure.
From these findings, it can now be assumed that the personal coping responses of the patients go a long way in determining how much emotional factors are included in the equation of recovery from breast surgery procedures.
An improvement on pessimistic traits is usually the key to better handling of the stress related to surgery.