Incertidumbre, esperanza y corporalidad en el final de la vida

Abstract

This paper works on the experience of uncertainty and embodiment in patients with oncological diseases, who are attended in a Palliative Care Unit of Buenos Aires city, Argentine. Based on an ethnografic approach, we show different ways in which patients interrogate their corporal sensations related to illness experience in contexts of strong uncertainty. First, we explore a way of hipervigilance of the body, where the physical symptoms are interpreted as signs of illness and death. Second, we explore alternative forms of interpreting bodily sensations, related to narratives of hope. Tentative, precarious, threatening or reparative, interpretations that patients make of their corporal signs present subtle variations of biomedical knowdledge, and show central aspects of emotional dimension in the illness experience.