January 27, 2019 Journal article Open Access

Cancer Blog Narratives: The Experience of Under-Fifty Women with Breast Cancer during Different Times after Diagnosis

Giorgia Margherita; Anna Gargiulo; Daniela Lemmo; Maria Luisa Martino

The recent literature shows an increase of breast cancer in women under 50, however still few are the studies which analyse the impact of the disease in this specific target age. This study aims at exploring the most prevalent topics in Italian cancer blogs of women who have received a breast cancer diagnosis before the age of 50, in order to understand their experience of illness and the characteristics of women's narrations at different times after diagnosis (1 year, 2 years, 3 years). We collected the textual corpus of 4 Italian breast cancer blogs and performed a thematic analysis. Five themes resulted, which, after interpretation using factorial mapping, fall into 3 sense vectors: toward the thought of the experience; from the external to the internal world; breast cancer: from rigidity to mobility. The blog analysis allows to build a first step of the scientific knowledge about the traumatic specificity of this experience, showing a need for processing the emotions. This allows to think about clinical support practices tailored to this group, in order to develop a diachronic processing of the experience and the construction of a new continuity of life.