title: Lived experience of chronic pain and fibromyalgia: women's stories from daily life.
abstract: The hermeneutic-phenomenological study presented in this article is grounded in a lifeworld perspective. The authors aimed at rich descriptions of women's lived experience of chronic pain and fibromyalgia. They conducted individual life-form interviews with 12 women with fibromyalgia. On the basis of the women's stories, three typologies were developed: at the will of the treacherous body-powerlessness; struggling to escape the treacherous body- ambivalence; and caring for the treacherous body-coping. The lived experience described in the typologies were further interpreted according to the existentials: lived body, lived time and space, and lived relations. The women's stories point to a world experienced as fundamentally changed by a body in chronic pain, describing a struggle in which they feel that their existence is at stake.
authors.affiliation: Section for Physiotherapy Science, Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Bergen, Norway.
authors.forename: Målfrid
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Råheim
authors.forename: Wenche
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Håland
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002908:Chronic Disease; D005260:Female; D005356:Fibromyalgia / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008875:Middle Aged; D033262:Narration; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D011209:Power, Psychological; D012944:Social Support