In the second season of "Human World", the young mother Yan Hongwei maintained a strong and optimistic attitude when facing fierce cancer. Her motivation to fight cancer to the end came from her deep concern for her young daughter.
Cancer is an incredibly painful blow to any individual or family, but Yan Hongwei's positive and optimistic attitude in the face of cancer, as well as the deep parent-child bond within her family, brought a touch of warmth to many netizens amidst their grief.
01. The Resentment and Despair of a 33-Year-Old Mother Diagnosed with Cancer
Yan Hongwei originally had a life that many people envied: she was loved by her parents from a young age, had a harmonious family, found a respectable job as a university teacher in Shanghai after graduating with a doctorate, developed a relationship with her lover from campus to marriage, bought a house in Shanghai, and had a lovely daughter.
All of this was completely rewritten when Yan Hongwei was 33 years old, due to cancer.
Yan Hongwei suffered from advanced triple-negative breast cancer , the most aggressive type of breast cancer with an extremely poor prognosis and a very high mortality rate. Famous singers A-Sun and Yao Beina both passed away from triple-negative breast cancer at approximately the same age.
Despite knowing the dangers, Yan Hongwei actively fought against cancer. For 36 out of 52 weeks a year, she underwent chemotherapy, trying almost every kind of chemotherapy drug: paclitaxel, docetaxel, carboplatin, cisplatin, and more.
Despite repeated ineffective treatments, Yan Hongwei never gave up. She even traveled to the United States for further treatment and went to Hong Kong alone to purchase targeted drugs. She always faces the camera with a bright smile and often jokes about her cancer, saying, "If you kill me, you're finished too." "They're amazing! They truly are my cancer cells, incredible!"
This strong and optimistic person will instantly break down and lose her smile when talking about her three-year-old daughter; all her resentment can be summed up in one sentence:
"Let me spend some more time with my daughter; I want to watch her grow up."
02. In the fight against cancer, patients and their families are all comrades-in-arms.
Although cancer patients are the only ones suffering from the disease, it is not only the cancer patients who need to face the disease, but also their relatives.
After learning of their diagnosis, cancer patients typically go through five psychological stages : denial, anger and anxiety, compromise, depression, and acceptance.
During the denial phase , patients are actually in a defensive state, refusing to acknowledge the fact that they have cancer, instinctively suppressing intense emotional reactions, and resisting the concern of their loved ones. In fact, during this stage, patients desperately need to communicate their condition with their families, and family members should patiently try to help them open up and release stress.
During periods of anger and anxiety , cancer patients sometimes vent their frustrations on their family members, using anger to mask fear or sadness. Family members often don't understand that this anger isn't directed at them personally, but rather an outlet for their emotions. During this stage, family members need to try to understand the cancer patient. After the anger subsides, the patient can try to explain and apologize to their family, even indirectly.
During the compromise phase , cancer patients, after calming down, may place their hopes on treatment, but at the same time, they may also experience fear. At such times, actively appreciating the care and love of family members, and even recalling past emotional memories, can provide patients with greater motivation.
During the depressive phase , if a patient's condition does not improve after a period of treatment, they may fall into feelings of frustration and depression. This can manifest as passivity, reduced activity, low mood, silence, and withdrawal.
Family members should analyze the reasons for the patient's depression. If it is due to fear of hopelessness in treatment, they can encourage the patient to interact more with other patients with similar illnesses and use positive experiences to increase the patient's self-confidence and eliminate negative emotions.
If the patient is indeed in a very extreme situation and there is no hope of recovery, family members should spend more time with them, communicate more, understand the patient's worries and unfulfilled wishes, help the patient maintain their image, and make them feel that they still have dignity and respect.
After experiencing the above stages, some patients gradually accept the reality of facing death; this is the acceptance period . The patient's emotions will slowly calm down, they will re-accept the facts, adjust their mindset, and face the enormous changes in their lives caused by the illness and treatment. At this time, they may become indifferent, their emotions will stabilize, and they will calmly await death, departing this world with serenity.
Cancer treatment is a very long and painful process. If patients are not used to talking about their condition with their families, family members should just interact with the patient as usual and not rush to talk about the cancer. When the patient is willing to share, patiently listening is already a great help.
If a cancer patient is middle-aged, another challenge is discussing their illness with their children. Even young children can sense when something is wrong in the family, and hiding it will only increase their anxiety.
If the children are young, you can simply explain the reason for seeking medical treatment or use storytelling to illustrate the illness. Teenagers, on the other hand, may become agitated about their parents' cancer or worry about its genetic predisposition, potentially leading to behavioral problems. It's important to be mindful of this and try to communicate with them in an open manner, listening to their thoughts.
03. How can family members prepare themselves psychologically when facing the death of a loved one with cancer?
During Yan Hongwei's cancer treatment, one of their goldfish died. Yan Hongwei's husband and daughter buried the goldfish and told their young daughter:
"Do you understand? This is what happens when you die; you can't move anymore."
"Don't disturb it, it's going to sleep here forever, for a hundred years."
Cancer is a difficult disease to overcome, and patients may face death at any time. Family members also need to prepare themselves psychologically.
For many cancer patients and their families, "death" is a terrifying word. In this context, "death education" becomes especially important.
During the semi-finals of the fifth season of "Qipa Talk", debater Qiu Chen said: "Death is the most precise education about life. Only when we see it, face it, and are even willing to discuss it can we possibly fight against it."
Families of cancer patients who have lost loved ones go through a difficult period. They also need proper psychological counseling to understand the nature of death, correctly comprehend its inevitability and significance in life, and learn to manage their personal sense of loss so as to face death with a more peaceful mindset.
References:
1. They are family members of cancer patients. Health Times. 2019-8-13.
2 Lu Tao. How family members can help cancer patients get through the five major "psychological cycles" peacefully [J]. Self-care. 2019, (8): 52-53.
3 Jiang Xiaorui, Zhou Qing. The impact of death education on the psychological state of families of patients with advanced cancer [J]. Southwest National Defense Medicine. 2016, 26(11): 1290-1292.
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