Abstract
The opening moments of a phone call reveal how a father informs his son, for the 1st time, that his mom's tumor is malignant. An extended phone opening reveals how delaying talk about the mom's condition allows for important interactional work: Displaying resistance to announce the bad news directly, projecting and anticipating the valence of forthcoming news prior to its announcement, and delicately sharing ownership of a serious health condition at the outset of a family cancer journey. Enacting a biomedical demeanor, replete with technical language and withholdings of emotional and personal reactions, subsequent delivery and reception of the bad news is managed stoically-a normalized resource employed by consequential figures when managing and coping with dreaded news events. By closely examining how family members talk through cancer on the telephone, the scope of health communication research is extended beyond clinical settings into home environments, progress is made on the noticeable absence of interactional studies in psycho-oncology, and diverse implications arise for understanding how lay persons diagnose and manage illness dilemmas.
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