Fading Away

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Fading Away - The Experience of Transition in Families with Terminal Illness
By Betty Davies, Baywood Publishing
ISBN 0 89503 127 2
The Experience of Transition in Families with Terminal Illness.

This book comes out of the qualitative study of the experiences of twenty-three families in which one parent was dying of cancer. The study attempted to better understand the effect of terminal illness on the entire family system and sought to develop a theoretical framework that would guide the assessment of and services to such families.

As a result of interviews with patients, spouses and their adult children over three phases of the study, the process of "fading away" was identified and conceptualised in terms of various phases which contributed to this process.

The book is not a research report but rather presents more generally the ideals that developed from the study with two purposes:
1. to increase the reader's understanding of particular experiences that families encounter when dealing with terminal illness, specifically cancer: The intended readership also includes the families themselves;
2. to propose guidelines for care to be considered by practitioners working with such families.

Many previous studies of cancer families have relied on retrospective reports of one family member, usually the surviving spouse. This study purposefully sought the fuller family experience by including the terminal ill persons and at least one adult child in the interviews. In this regard, the book presents the experiences and voices of these family members. The book, also communicates that caring for and about a dying family member involves physical, emotional, and cognitive effort, or "work." Fading Away identifies the dilemmas and struggles of family members as they do the best they can for the terminally ill patient.

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