The Uncertain Presence: Experiences of Living with Metastatic Breast Cancer

Drawing from interviews with women with metastatic breast cancer in the UK and France, in this article I analyze uncertainties linked to this condition. In particular, I show how the impossibility of foreseeing the evolution of the condition, also as an indirect consequence of medical innovation, initiates an irreparable disruption of life after diagnosis. I further show how the lives of the patients are not only limited by the illness, but also by the difficulty of finding a place in society. I argue that such experiences are best understood through the concept of the crisis of the presence.