YA Lymphoma Patient on HBO’s In Treatment

As noted in a recent post, cancer is often used as a plot trajectory for characters in movies and television series.? ? A cancer diagnosis is often used to show some kind of ironic twist of fate (the selfless mother dying at a young age or the evil villain finally getting his due) orthey are thrown in a story just to add contrast to other characters (think Beaches).

HBO’s second season of the psychological dramatic series, In Treatment, features a newly-diagnosed twenty-three year old cancer patient named April. This time the portrayal of a cancer patient will be different because it is her inner journey that will control the plot.? The series takes place in a psychologist’s office (Doctor played by Gabriel Byrne) and moves at a therapeutically mixed pace (silence followed by outbursts). Audiences will get to see how a diagnosis brings up every kind of past and present neurosis, either personal or familial, and just how complex things can get in the life of a young adult survivor.

In the first episode we can see her first stages of denial and an argument with her shrink about alternative medicine. It is curious that she has Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, an often more unpredictable cancer, meaning the writers will have an option to give her a fatal ending.? But, April should be an interesting character to watch and ultimately determine — how well do the writers know the psyche of a young cancer patient and how real are audiences willing to get?