Motherhood Fatal Illness Narratives: Death Awareness and Biographical Reinforcement to Restore Continuity

Within a broader context of medicalisation, dying and death in Thailand remains a distressing and taboo topic, let alone being studied sociologically outside the medical realm. However, there seems to have an increasing demand to comprehensively understand various dimensions of dying and death as the institution of medicine is moving towards excellence. Illness narratives, reflecting patients' experiences, could plausibly open new approaches in medical education, practices, and management.

This study illicits illness narratives from mothers of dependent (very young age) children who have recently been diagnosed with cancer. The social identity of "motherhood," widely perceived to be self-sacrifice and a sole responsibility of the women themselves, makes the situation of sick mothers even extraordinary. Illness narratives of these dying mothers should be capable of revealing processes and mechanisms in which motherhood as a personal and social identity interacts with the fatal illness in a personalised context and hence produces (1) experiences and conceptualisation of illness in terms of causes, treatment, prognosis, and especially awareness of their death based on gender and moral discourses of being a mother in Thai society and (2) accounts of embodiment and suffering and its implications on daily management of this disruptive event.

An initial round of talks regarding life history with 5 participants (aiming at least 10) tends to suggest that motherhood is an ultimate source of inspiration which helps reconstructing meanings of fatal illness through an unconventional pattern of death awareness rather than vice versa.  Death awareness of these mothers is unfolding through a complex relationship between information and knowledge of cancer as a fatal but common illness disclosed formally through their interactions with physicians and informally through lay perspectives and the emotions of being ill and feeling ill.  This kind of awareness stimulates their determination to survive and thereafter an adherence to treatment.