When Cancer Is the Self: An Interpretive Description of the Experience of Identity by Hematology Cancer Patients

BACKGROUND: The term “cancer” is imbued with identity signals that trigger certain assumed sociocultural responses. Clinical practice with hematological cancer patients suggests the experience of these patients may be different than that of solid tumor cancer patients. OBJECTIVE: We sought to explore the research question: How are identity experiences described and elucidated by adult hematological cancer patients? METHODS: This qualitative study was guided by interpretive description as the methodological framework. RESULTS: Preexisting identity labels and assumptions assigned to the overarching “cancer” diagnosis were viewed by patients as entirely inadequate to fully describe and inform their experience. Instead, findings revealed the propensity of adult hematology oncology patients to co-create and enact new identities increasingly reflective of the nonlocalized nature of their cancer subtype. Three themes that arose from the data included the unique cancer-self, the invasion of cancer opposed to self, and the personification of the cancer within self. CONCLUSIONS: Hematology oncology patients experience and claim a postdiagnosis identity that is self-described as distinct and highly specialized, and are distinct to solid tumor patients in aspects of systemic and total consumption of the self. This uniqueness is extended to the specific hematological cancer subtype down to genetics, indicating a strong “new” sense of self. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The manner in which hematology oncology patients in this study embraced notions of transformed self and isolating uniqueness provides practitioners with a lens through which new and innovative interventions can be constructed to improve patient care and psychosocial outcomes.