This finding supports Kleinman’s (1997) theory that illness embodies the body, self, and social symbolic networks.Illness is not only personal experience; it is interacting, communicating,and social oriented.Children and adolescents with cancer develop protective strategies to respond to the transformed self-perception of the body and their relationships with others.
Gergen (1985) stated that the “self” is an actor, which is understood and constructed in the transformation of the time and historical context. Experiencing the impact of body image change, children and adolescents with cancer long for a normal life, and reject the notion of having fragile and sick bodies.They re-evaluate the intricacies of the entwined elements of cancer, body, self, and life. Facing this challenge in their life, they rethink the relationships between cancer and the body.
A comprehensive systematic review by Fan and Eiser (2009) of the body image of children and adolescents with cancer examined 32 articles from 1980 to 2008, including 18 quantitative studies, seven qualitative studies, and seven mixed-method studies.
This review found that there was no consistent evidence pertaining to differences in body image between children and adolescents with cancer and healthy controls.The findings in this study of body image only presented in descriptive narrative form, without further integration of the qualitative findings.