title: [Making sense of the narratives of chronically ill persons].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Understand how chronically ill persons reframe life through their discursive practices.
  
  
  METHODS
  Six interviews were selected from the original seventeen made with chronically ill persons from a public hospital in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre. Recorded and transcribed interviews produced narratives concerning the existential situation in the face of disease, perspectives for the future, a comprehension of diagnosis and of therapy as well as the role of professionals for the reframing. Talks were divided in linguistic repertoires concerning diagnosis and therapy.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In the first, the narratives of meaning are structured around cause of the disease from a genetic background (destiny) or due to the style of life (fault). In the repertoires about therapy, narratives of the self identity reconfiguration depend on the autonomy or heteronomy in relation to the physician's words as mediator of salvation, on perception of the body as a factor of relation, on the social representation of medication and on emotional situation.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Self-satisfaction relies on finding the thread to bring together the elements of existence based on a new model permitting a new identity. The professional must be involved in the narratives of identity reconstruction enabling therapy to produce the expected effect and for the patient to feel as a participant of the process, assuming with autonomy the necessary changes in life.
authors.affiliation: Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, RS.
authors.forename: José Roque
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Junges
authors.forename: Tatiane
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bagatini
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D033262:Narration