Narratives about self-care by people at the end of their lives

Abstract

Introduction: Cancer mobilizes people and families who search for healing practices that provide relief from physical, emotional, social, and spiritual distress. Objective: To analyze the self-care of cancer ill people at the end of their lives; patients staying under Palliative Care in a home care service. Materials and method: A qualitative study in Interpretative Anthropology and Medical Anthropology carried out in a home care serviceof a teaching hospital. From September 2015 to January 2016, eleven individuals at the end of their lives took part in the study. Unstructured observation and narrative interviews were the methods used to collect data, in addition to the narrative analysis from Fritz Schütze. Results: The self-care modalities were biomedical, popular, traditional, simultaneous, overlapping, and juxtaposed. None of the participants noticed any defined scheme or practice. Some people assumed adaptation and experimentation depending on the practice's success to alleviate suffering. Conclusions: The patients resorted to various forms of self-care during the disease, based on sociocultural aspects and sought different practices to meet their needs.