Conference about Living With Cancer. Coping with Emotion and Change

Living With Cancer. Coping with Emotion and Change
Written By Nasra Al Adawi


It was such privilege to be invited to attended conference on “Living With Cancer. Coping with Emotion and Change” organized by the National Association for Cancer Awareness on Sunday 14th and Monday 15th March 2010. Since I have strong interest on campaigning on cancer awareness, it was a chance that I could not miss.


One of the areas that conference had discussed had been so appealing and at the same time very emotional was the topic Palliative Care presented by Dr. Mahmoud Foda.

The goal of Palliative Care as explained in wikipedia is to prevent and relieve suffering and to improve quality of life for people facing serious, complex illness. Dr. Mahmoud Foda also opened the discussion on the need to establish such model in Oman and how a civil society organization as the National Association for Cancer Awareness can be a wheeling channel to initiate a Palliative Care for cancer patients. He also explained models in USA which are termed as Hospice Care which provided palliative care for those at the end of life in parallel supporting the their families emotionally and psychologically.


As for the second round table discussion was about Volunteerism presented by HE Dr. Wahid Al Kharusi, the discussion had emphasized that though many are registered as volunteers but its only few numbers are available or committed to volunteer.

He also questioned if there is any framework that can be used in retaining a pool of volunteers committed and ways to alliance the efforts between the civil society organizations. Among the related topics are whether there is any kind of policy available to protect volunteers, volunteer management system including the organization itsself having a plan on its needs, motivation and retaining volunteers, organizations that provided training for volunteers in Oman, youth volunteers need to be tabbed. The discussion led to a number of recommendations that will implemented through forming a group overseeing the implementation.






On a final personal thought, the conference had been very educative and as I look forward for continuation of this conference, I would also be interested to take part in hearing patients lesson learned or they stories on Living With Cancer and Coping with Emotion and Change together hearing the point of view of their families.

My part of how I cope on the thought of loosing my father to cancer, first is the believe that all of us will go to the same direction. In our religion Islam, its part of the teaching to accept that death is part of destiny that we have take. Its always hard to know that my father is longer here, but its consoling to know that a bit of sharing my thought can help others.

The book Within Myself even though it portrayed stories of women going beyond cancer it helped me in helping others it had relieved me from anger and sadness towards myself and I’m thankful for all the miracles that sparked my way in realizing a dream.