Life-death duality in the experience of metastasis patients

Abstract

The new millennium brings along a new reality to Brazil: population aging, and with it an increase in cases of chronic diseases, among them cancer. With the purpose of understanding how oncological patients under chemotherapeutic treatment due to the metastasis experience the possibility of dying, seven interviews with patients from an oncology clinic were carried out in a small town in the state of Paraná. In order to analyze these interviews, ideas from Martin Heidegger's philoso-phical reference were used. From this analysis, death showed itself in different ways: implicitly; as a natural phenomenon, experienced in an impersonal way through someone else's death; as a phenomenon that permeates life. The it-happens-to-the-other condition made possible to unveil death through words, actions and looks, which at the same time shelter and denounce; and through the relation with the health professionals through caring forms almost always unauthentic.