This study originates from a doctoral dissertation that aimed to better understand patients' oncological radiotherapy experience, given the theoretical and methodological reference of interpretative anthropology and the ethnographic method. The informants were 10 patients of both sexes, aged 34 to 80. The data was collected from March to August of 2007 through semi-structured interviews and participant observations. Through the interpretative analysis proposed by Hammersley and Atkinson, we constructed the clusters of meanings - Life alterations for the cancer and radiation survivor, and The survivor controlling their lives and weaving webs of the future. We understand nursing to go beyond the biological dimension of care when it includes the webs woven by cancer survivors to adjust to a new life, as they realize their existential limits, incorporate the disease and treatment, and insert them in a preliminary process which persists for the rest of their lives.
Neoplasms; Survival; Culture; Nursing