How to Increase the Quality of a Suffering Experience: Lessons Derived From the Diary Narratives of a Dying Adolescent Girl

How to Increase the Quality of a Suffering Experience: Lessons Derived From the Diary Narratives of a Dying Adolescent Girl

Kavas MV

Omega (westport)

2018

adolescent; dying; lived experience; narrative analysis; Suffering; unsolicited diary

Personal narratives are assumed to be primary sources of the essential meaning of lived experiences of dying. In this study, I analyzed the personal diary of Mirac Fidan, a terminally ill adolescent with advanced cancer who kept a diary until her death at the age of 15. Mirac's Diary, also published as a book, was subjected to hermeneutic phenomenological narrative analysis. Inferences were drawn regarding the following basic elements: (a) The dynamics in which Mirac lived and (2) her perceptions of herself, her immediate environment, and her experiences. Suffering seems to be the main experience dominating Mirac's life, which I examined with regard to two dimensions: suffering caused by inevitable factors and suffering caused by preventable/changeable factors. The results suggest that if various causes among contextual factors are neutralized, then the quality of the existential experience determined by the inevitable factors would increase.

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February 2018 List