Cancer is a life-changing experience, and side effects from treatment hinder survivors from going back to their pre-cancer ‘normal life’. Moreover, it becomes an even greater burden for lung cancer survivors who have received pulmonary resection. We aimed to understand the ‘new normal’ and barriers to achieve it among lung cancer survivors who underwent surgery.
This is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews among survivors of lung cancer after surgery. Thirty-two participants were recruited from their postoperative follow-up clinics. In-depth interviews were conducted in accordance with semi-structured interview guidelines that consisted of how survivors defined “new normal”, their expectation to reach this notion, type of support needed and the barriers that hindered them from achieving it. Audio-recorded interviews were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Systematic comparison of transcripts was made to identify recurrent or common themes, and arrange them into categories, which were relevant to the purpose of the study.
The following 3 themes were found to describe lung cancer survivors’ perspectives about “new normal”: (1) improvement of burdensome symptoms, (2) no difficulty in carrying out desired activities, and (3) being financially responsible for their family. Survivors considered improvements in shortness of breath, fatigue, and pain to indicate recovery, hence when these symptoms improved over time, they felt like they have recovered well, although not exactly to their pre-surgery level. Majority of the survivors expected to recover 70∼90% of their baseline function. Defining one’s ‘new normal’ and setting realistic expectations were helpful for survivors. We also found that fear of cancer recurrence, persisting symptoms, and high family expectation were barriers to achieve ‘new normal’.
“Can I go back to the life I once had?” is a critical question survivors have. Understanding how lung cancer survivors perceive their status and figure out their ‘new normal’ would be important. It is needed for healthcare professionals to communicate with patients about their expectations on ‘normality’ from the beginning of treatment. This process should be included in comprehensive survivorship care.
The authors.
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (2019R1A2C2009751 and NRF-2020R1F1A1075388).
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.