Sentidos atribuídos ao luto por pais de criança com leucemia linfoblástica aguda

Abstract

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is the most incident childhood cancer, even with great advances in treatment there is a percentage of patients who still die as a result of this disease. The diagnosis of childhood cancer causes family restructuring, parents need to redefine their roles, and reframe the meaning of their lives around the child's illness. The possibility of a child's death goes against the natural meaning of life, where children bury their parents, not the other way around. The suffering that involves parents and relatives from a diagnosis of a disease with the possibility of not having curative treatment and only palliative treatment is immeasurable. Objective: To interpret the anticipated grief described by parents of children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Methods: Longitudinal qualitative research to explore parents' anticipated grief. The intentional sample was 20 families was recruited from February 2021, twenty-eight parents were eligible to participate in the research, however, seven of these refused to participate justifying not feeling comfortable to narrate their experiences, and one of these was excluded due to experiencing the experience of mourning during the interview period. The study was conducted in a pediatric hospital that is a reference in oncological treatment in the southern region of Brazil. Results: Through the family members' reports, it is possible to illustrate the importance of the help and support that these parents need in the face of their children's diagnosis, for some participants it is something extremely painful and challenging, even though there are several ways to ease the pain of the mourning, it involves, hurts and consists of one of the main fears of human beings, the death of a loved one.