The lived experience of seven people treated with autologous bone marrow/peripheral blood stem cell transplant

Autologous bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cell transplant are recent treatments to offer hope of a cure or prolonged remission for certain types of cancer. Current literature predominantly has either a biomedical focus or deals with survivorship issues. The ways in which survivors perceive this treatment option is important in providing nurses with a deeper insight and understanding with which to inform nursing practice. Using methods consistent with hermeneutic phenomenology, seven people who survived this treatment were invited to participate in sharing their stories in individual audiotaped interviews. Themes that emerged from their stories include changing concepts of self, the significance of relationships, being different from the past and temporality.