A place of ones' own. The meaning of lived experience as narrated by an elderly woman with severe chronic heart failure. A case-study

The condition of chronic heart failure often means an increasing need of institutional care caused by the severity of symptoms as fatigue and breathlessness. In this case-study, two interviews with an elderly woman were made at a 1-yr interval. A phenomenological hermeneutic method was used to interpret the interviews. The first narrative, recorded in the subject's home, showed a feeling of being at home in the body, in the room and with health care. In the second narrative, when the informant lived in a nursing home, a feeling of having no at-homeness, neither in the body, the room nor in the relation to the caregivers, was expressed. To deny a patient this place, or to promote a system that does not permit room for patients as whole persons, threatens patients' as well as caregivers' identity by conveying that there is no place for reflection upon the experience of illness.