‘It's very hard to have a future when you can’t travel’: Meaning, mobility and mortality after a cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Being diagnosed with a life-limiting illness entails a fundamental reshaping of one's relationship with the future. From ‘bucket lists’ of destinations and experiences to ‘flights of hope’ for experimental or specialised medical care, diagnoses of serious illness are deeply entwined with travel in Australian cultural narratives. In this paper, we draw on a thematic analysis of interviews with cancer patients and their carers to ask what meanings are attached to narratives of travel – whether completed or constrained, imagined or interrupted – in the context of a cancer diagnosis. Focusing on narratives of travel draws attention to themes of disruption, resilience, autonomy and living a meaningful life within the precarious timescape of cancer. Through this analysis of time and travel, we examine how normative expectations of how to live with or beyond cancer can produce tensions, particularly in the uncertain but precariously hopeful landscape of precision cancer treatments.