What Contributes to Hope in the Cancer Patient?

Cancer is generally seen as an ominous life-threatening disease which creates, for its victims, highly problematic, foreboding futures. However, when I interviewed 24 patients receiving radiation therapy at two urban medical centers, I found that most did not define their futures as threatening. Rather, they tended to vacillate between hope and doubt, with hopefulness the more common response. These patients were from other communities, 17 were over 50 years old, and 10 were coming for initial treatment of their diseases.