Breast cancer: a solitary encounter with the fear of the unknown

Abstract

This is a qualitative research whose goal is to understand the experiences of women during the process of discovering breast cancer. The study involved eight college women who developed breast cancer, with ages ranging from 30 to 57 years. The comprehension of the studied phenomenon derived from Merleau-Ponty’s (1996) phenomenology and to analyze the data it was used the five steps of Giorgi’s (1985, 1997) phenomenological method, adding to them a sixth step proposed by Comiotto (1992). From this analysis, emerged two dimensions related to the essence Lonely encounter with the fear f the unknown: from the moment of finding the lump to the crucial moment of diagnosis, and experienced conflicts within the most significant relationships (husband, children and parents).