Chronic illness as way of life: a study of the multiple sclerosis's lived realities

The present study aims to investigate the lived experiences of patients suffering from chronic illnesses, which, in this case study, is MS. The research question revolves round investigating the illness position in sufferer’s history and its persistence via pains, fears and future expectations in social (con) text. The study’s theoretical idea offers that social circumstance, through representations of the illness and structural restrictions, excludes the sufferer, thus the conceptualization of chronic illnesses ought to be based not on the mental experience but on the sufferer’s lived realities. Having surveyed theories related to illness experiences, Michel Bury’s conceptualization of chronic illnesses as biographical disruption, which is predicated on highlighting the sufferer’s mental experience regardless of structural, cultural and social circumstances, is challenged. This research, through thematic study of MS sufferers’ experiences on MS Center’s special website, employs the concept of way of life as a place for interaction between the illness and treatment, the structural conditions (from producing illness to stigmatizing the sufferer) and the disease representation in society as well as the ways to resist it to conceptualize the chronic illnesses. Unlike biographical disruption, the concept of way of life is based on the possibilities of living in spite of suffering from chronic illnesses and extends, simultaneously, the illness confrontation from mere individual confrontation to one in social life situation.