The experience of healing as perceived by participants in this study was an active, involving process with movement toward achieving balance and wholeness and the individuals evolving beyond the place they started before surgery. The data clustered into three substantive themes: Active Participation; Achieving Balance; and Evolving Beyond. Active Participation involved a belief that healing does not just happen, one needs to make it happen. Participants acknowledged that part of healing goes on regardless of their intervention but that was not the part they experienced, except to monitor the results.
Participants actively sought control of their body, their activities, their attitude, and their privacy. Achieving Balance was a process of returning to feeling like an integrated system that did not need monitoring. For a time participants felt fragmented with swings between pushing too hard and then becoming exhausted; requiring extensive rest. The mind and the body seemed out of sync and there was a desire to reintegrate their functions. Evolving Beyond was a process of life healing or attending to more than the immediate recovery.
The participants examined goals and values. They reviewed past events and established new priorities for the future. The three main themes all related to a process theme. This theme expressed the dynamic nature of healing and is represented in each of the substantive themes. There were some specific comments by participants that related directly to the process of healing and these will be discussed in a separate section following the three main themes. To clarify these relationships, Figure 1 depicts the three main themes and the process theme in diagram form.
Healing Process ss Ac Ac Healing Process Healing Themes The three major themes and the process theme were supported by subthemes. Surgery is a profound event that temporarily robs individuals of a sense of control over their lives and their bodies. These participants actively sought to regain that control. They felt personally responsible for their healing process and actively participated in making it happen. They were proud of themselves if they were doing well or upset with themselves when they had setbacks.
As they believed their attitude was essential to healing, they actively worked on making it positive. They pushed other people away for a time in order to heal in their own way. They wanted to know and understand what to expect and were anxious to get started on whatever they were allowed to do. That is not to say they did not make use of medical resources and assistance from others. They usually accepted their need for help but actively sought to reduce that need. The Goal is Control.
A specific desire to take conscious control was expressed by all participants. They were frequently proud of themselves for how well they were doing or upset with themselves for how poorly they were doing. They thought that they had control and that the success or failure of their healing was at least partially up to them. All the participants talked about the importance of gaining or maintaining control. Most participants were successful in this pursuit and they considered this success important for healing.