The Meaning of Narratives among Childhood Cancer Survivors: Biographical Accounts of Children Who Have Experienced Cancer

Abstract

This study analyzes the narratives of childhood cancer survivors within five years of treatment completion. Drawing on Bury’s concept of biographical disruption, the study examines how experiences of cancer in childhood produce upheaval in developmental trajectories, temporal orientation, and social participation, using the three dimensions of narrative inquiry: sociality, temporality, and place. The analysis indicates that prolonged hospitalization and illness separated the children from everyday routines, creating uncertainty about how to interpret and integrate the time they had lost, while they were simultaneously expected to articulate positive or “resilient” narratives of survivorship. As a consequence, opportunities for expressing their lived experiences in nuanced terms were constrained. Moreover, age-based regulations within educational systems and medical assistance programs—designed around norms centered on healthy children—expose structural inequities, whereby challenges that should be addressed collectively by society were instead individualized and left to the efforts of children and their families.