The Being in some body: An Autoethnographic Account of Being and Becoming-in-the-world with Multiple Sclerosis
type: CreativeWork
description: Embodiment and experience as a nurse, wife, mother, researcher, and educator living and working with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the focus of this study. MS is a chronic de-generative neurological illness. It was confirmed in my being in 1998. Through my chosen approach of autoethnography as method, and on the basis of my work into and on my ‘self’ and ‘being’, I invite a radical review of the professional organization and medical(ised) treatment of those with MS and with similar chronic conditions. My aims are to generate research that goes beyond the passive construal of the body typical of medical research to a process through which embodiment can be understood not only as representation of the body but as a significant influencer of a semblance of actuality or verisimilitude. In this work I place my experience in conversation with scholarly voices critiquing embodied experiences of self and being in the world as heuristic inquiry. The intertwining relationships between self, body, and work as mutual organisational relationships are examined through the development of a self-reflexive praxis, in which embodiment, experience, and meaning-making resonate through autoethnography as both topic of study and constituent of the research experience. By drawing on first person narrative accounts of my experiences since the confirmed diagnosis of MS, I make visible some of the seemingly invisible effects of living and working with this degenerative illness. I chronicle and analyse my engagement with a profession whose calling is to care for those, who like me, live with chronic health conditions that may periodically present as acute or increasingly debilitating experiences. My voice is clearly present in this text, bestowing an authorial voice from my body to re-view, re-veal, re-tell highly personal accounts specifically focusing on how I, the researcher as writer, have explored the impacts of a confirmed diagnosis of MS on my life and the lives of those I care about. Thr…
abstract: Embodiment and experience as a nurse, wife, mother, researcher, and educator living and working with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is the focus of this study. MS is a chronic de-generative neurological illness. It was confirmed in my being in 1998. Through my chosen approach of autoethnography as method, and on the basis of my work into and on my ‘self’ and ‘being’, I invite a radical review of the professional organization and medical(ised) treatment of those with MS and with similar chronic conditions. My aims are to generate research that goes beyond the passive construal of the body typical of medical research to a process through which embodiment can be understood not only as representation of the body but as a significant influencer of a semblance of actuality or verisimilitude. In this work I place my experience in conversation with scholarly voices critiquing embodied experiences of self and being in the world as heuristic inquiry. The intertwining relationships between self, body, and work as mutual organisational relationships are examined through the development of a self-reflexive praxis, in which embodiment, experience, and meaning-making resonate through autoethnography as both topic of study and constituent of the research experience. By drawing on first person narrative accounts of my experiences since the confirmed diagnosis of MS, I make visible some of the seemingly invisible effects of living and working with this degenerative illness. I chronicle and analyse my engagement with a profession whose calling is to care for those, who like me, live with chronic health conditions that may periodically present as acute or increasingly debilitating experiences. My voice is clearly present in this text, bestowing an authorial voice from my body to re-view, re-veal, re-tell highly personal accounts specifically focusing on how I, the researcher as writer, have explored the impacts of a confirmed diagnosis of MS on my life and the lives of those I care about. Thr…
author: Allbon, Caroline
keywords: embodiment, antenarrative
license: https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstreams/8f55b53c-22c5-4267-bd9a-890ba598dd91/download
date published: 2013
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:57:21Z
provider: University Waikato
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Waikato