The purpose of the qualitative phenomenological study was to examine how patients diagnosed with cancer can cope with stress. The research question was:

RQ1: How can patients diagnosed with cancer cope with stress?

We performed a thematic analysis by using NVivo 10 to examine the research question. The common theme was as follows: Patients diagnosed with cancer cannot cope with stress. Two primary subthemes appeared from the analysis: (a) I cannot cope with stress if I am experiencing an emergency, and (b) I cannot cope with stress if I feel that my cancer will change my future goals.