ABSTRACT
PERSONAL EXPERIENCES CAN lead researchers to choose particular topics for future inquiries and to reflect more deeply on the experiences of others. They can also lead to a great sense of identification and shared understanding with research participants whose stories bring to life personal experiences which might have been forgotten or set aside. Such shared recollections touch the core of one’s understanding of what it is to be a woman, to be ill and to be facing life with a new sense of uncertainty. What the present study reawakened for me was the memory of major illness and surgery-the experience of a deep sense of loss, of deprivation, beyond easy description. On a day soon after I had completed my doctoral studies-and as a good and faithful middle-aged woman feeling satisfied with my life’s achievements, personally, domestically and economically-my doctor informed me that I needed to undergo a hysterectomy. When I heard that the operation had to be performed as soon as possible, I took it to mean the end of my life was near and I was reduced to constant tears. I prepared for the operation while recollecting my life up to that time. During the week before surgery, I found myself in the hospital, full of theoretical knowledge as a nurse, but without experience to make sense of what was happening to me. During that week, I did some reflective writing about my life. Delivered to the operating room on a trolley, I felt that I would suffocate from anaesthesia and experienced severe dyspnoea. Following the operation, I faced premature menopause as a shock brought on by the sudden imbalance of hormones and the appearance of ‘hot flushes’. Feeling a tightness in my chest and with a flushed face, I could not fall asleep even with the window
open. My usually positive attitude towards life had been replaced with a multitude of uncertainties. I was suddenly cautious not to commit sins by means of mind, body or speech. Nowadays, when I recall this experience, I remember feeling that my whole way of life had changed.
