ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the breast cancer narratives of several women. These women come from diverse backgrounds and experiences, and each has a different diagnosis and prognosis. A diagnosis of breast cancer evokes a complex set of physical, psychological, and social conditions, circumstances that threaten a woman's sense of self and of her place in the world. Faced with challenges to valued identities, she works to make sense of her illness by reflecting on her experiences and renegotiating her identities with children, spouse, friends, co-workers, medical providers, other women with breast cancer; any and all with whom she has relationships. The breast cancer narrative may recount events and/or may account for events by explaining or justifying actions taken or feelings expressed in the story. Breast cancer narratives, then, reflect the struggle to manage identity in the face of a life- threatening chronic illness, but there is not one true breast cancer story.
