In this essay I describe the development of my prose work entitled Jorden a?r platt (Earth is flat). In the text we encounter a woman whose 40-year-old brother is diagnosed with lung cancer. The brother has been living a hectic life of drug addiction. The relationship between brother and sister is characterized by ironic distance, but also a lot of love.

Narratives about life-changing events like cancer have become more common in today?s society. The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether gender patterns in society can also be found in pathographies about cancer, and further to investigate how gender is expressed in these cancer related narratives. Questions were posed on characteristics of the autobiographical cancer narratives, how gender is constructed by the authors of these narratives, and what these narratives say about gender structures? liability to change in the individuals affected by this disease.

Studiens syfte var att beskriva det misshandlade barnets upplevelse av sin vardag och erfarenhet av möten med vården. Metoden som användes var kvalitativ narrativ analys. Fem patografiska autobiografier analyserades. Resultatet redovisades i fem teman: "den dysfunktionella familjen", "lögnen som strategi", "barnets ensamma kamp", "vara osynlig i vården" samt "från avgrunden till fristad". Diskussionen baserades på en syntes av Travelbees Human-to-Human Relationship Model och analysens fynd, det vill säga de fem temana.