Getting Cancer Is "Just Bad Luck": Exploring Bereaved Emerging and Young Adults' Cancer Risk Uncertainty After Caring for a Parent With Advanced Cancer.

BACKGROUND

Emerging and young adult caregivers (EYACs) who provide care to a parent with advanced cancer are underrepresented in caregiving scholarship, and yet, are not uncommon. Little is known about the psychosocial impacts of caring for a parent at this age or how EYACs manage their uncertainty regarding their own, potentially elevated, future cancer risk.

AIMS: To employ Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT) to examine how bereaved EYACs of a parent who died of advanced cancer appraise and manage their uncertainty regarding their personal cancer risk.

METHODS

We conducted a secondary analysis of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with EYACs (age 18-35) who cared for a parent who died of advanced cancer (n = 33) < 5 years prior. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed.

RESULTS

Some EYACs described appraising their cancer risk uncertainty as an opportunity and were motivated to reduce their risks through behavior choices. Others appraised it as a danger and experienced anxiety, paranoia, and fatalism about their risk. Others described their parents' cancer as "just bad luck," believing it to be a random anomaly that could not impact their cancer risk and reported no changes in their appraisal of their cancer risk uncertainty.

CONCLUSIONS

EYACs' opportunity and danger appraisals align with studies of high hereditary risk populations but reporting no change in cancer risk uncertainty is unique. The long-term health implications of appraising their parent's cancer as a random occurrence, disconnected from their personal risk, remain unknown. Future research should seek to help both bereaved and active EYACs better understand their cancer risk and manage their uncertainty.