By John Stone
Waiting for a transplantation of body part or a bone-marrow graft, brings things to a sudden realization and has a great impact on mental faculties. The high medical supervision which characterizes the ongoing operations constitutes a series of tests which engage in deep studies to gauge the capacities of physical and psychological resistance of the patients to which these techniques are addressed.
The teams of transplantation scientists gradually took up the practice of joining in with psychiatrists and psychologists, as well to evaluate the feasibility of such a project of care and to try to prevent the various chance mishaps of the type created by behavior or emotions, that would help with specific future grafts and during the most difficult periods of the follow-up.
The unity of the collaboration of the psychiatrists and psychologists extends to further build up the resistance needed by patients being treated for an aggressive cancer or graft and being able to look after them in teams. Indeed, the medical fraternity constitutes also a true support for the family of the patient, who generally has just lived multiple sufferings related to the evolution of a chronic disease towards the final phase.
Even tested, this family preserves a role of stability and strength for the patient, and its active participation in the assumption of responsibility of the patient deserves to be constant.
Lastly, the psychiatrist and the psychologist also assist in the support of the whole team conducting numerous team meetings, primarily looking at the expression of difficulties or assumptions of responsibility towards the patients:
Aiding the medical teams to cope with disappointments during treatments such as:
When a patient does not respond well to the general procedures of the team.
Hostility from patients who do not show themselves co-operating enough.
Difficulties during the mourning of lost patients in the event of death or quite simply at the time of their exit.
Various psychological characteristics raised at the time of the assessment make it possible to predict the survival rate of grafted patients. The initial objective of this evaluation is to highlight the existence of psychiatric counter-indications by specifying the risk of not observing later medications in particular.
This non-observance of proper medication after treatments can then indeed constitute an immediate vital threat; in all the cases it seriously compromises the efforts made up to that point by the medical team tending to them and the patient himself.
In the event of transplantation of a body part for a child it is important to evaluate the parental concerns and involvement in this long-term plan. Changes in the family relations were highlighted in particular when the donor of the body part is a relative.
Little attention was carried to the evaluation donor but some propose it should systematically be taken into account particularly mental stability, the structure of the personality, the degree of motivation of the donor and the existence of family pressures for the gift.
Also frequently observed was the patients exit from hospital and their introduction back into mainstream family life. Depression was often accompanied by disillusion which can indeed result from long waiting periods between treatment and relational difficulties with family or staff.
In addition even those who exit in favorable conditions are still susceptible to a time of mourning. Mourning of a body function or a body part, the images of a fresh graft this can all lead to depression and emotional mental thoughts, even mourning for the donor who lost his or her life to contribute the new body part has been regularly documented.
The other topic which very frequently appears after transplantation of a body part more precisely relates to the new body being inhabited by the spirit of the donor. The patient can have the feeling sometimes that there are two people in the same body. The sexual identity of the donor is also a source of curiosity with transplant patients. It is particularly the case when the donor is of opposite sex and that the receiver fears he or she will acquire the donors sexual characteristics.
The role of the psychiatrist is not to get the patient physically well but to help the medical teams properly evaluate and adapt treatment as required while emotionally supporting the patient and family.
About the author:
J. Stone writes exclusively for cancer-treatment-help.com www.cancer-treatment-help.com
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