Am I fine?

Abstract

Woven into the fabric of human existence is the possibility of death and suffering from disease. This essential vulnerability calls forth processes of meaning making, of grappling with uncertainty and morality. In this article we explore the uncertainty and ambiguity that exists in the space between bodily sensations and symptoms of illness. Bodily sensations have the potential to become symptoms of disease or to be absorbed into ordinariness, prompting the question: how do we ascribe meaning to sensations? In the context of middle-class everyday life in Denmark, we show how different potentialities of ambiguous sensations are weighed against each other on a culturally and morally contingent continuum between normal and not normal, uncovering the complex interplay between the body, everyday life, and pervasive biomedical discourses focusing on health promotion, symptom awareness, and care seeking.

‘It can’t do any harm’: A qualitative exploration of accounts of participation in preventive health checks

“…Similarly, a British study exploring individuals' decisions to participate in health checks found that the reasons for participating included potential reassurance that the participants were not at risk of chronic disease (Burgess et al, 2015). Additionally, a recent study by Offersen, Risør, Vedsted, and Andersen (2016) demonstrated that awareness of potential illness was part of peoples' everyday lives and that a health check could bring life to a potential illness as a risk. While we find that some participants attended the health check to confirm their health and thereby their current lifestyle, the health check did not bring life to a potential risk but instead produced a sense of security and control.…”

‘Motivational work’: a qualitative study of preventive health dialogues in general practice

“…This means that the assessment could point to healthrelated problems that patients may not have recognized as problematic. However, motivation for health behavioral change has generally been found to occur when patients experience symptoms affecting their quality of life and affected by conditions surrounding their everyday lives and to a lesser extent influenced by information about risk [10,[38][39][40][41]. Furthermore, although the TOF pilot study provided the patients with a risk profile and offered a digital health profile, which they were encouraged to look through to prepare for the health dialogue, we found that the risk profiles did not affect the health dialogues as such.…”

‘Motivational work’: a qualitative study of preventive health dialogues in general practice

“…This means that the assessment could point to health-related problems that patients may not have recognized as problematic. However, motivation for health behavioral change has generally been found to occur when patients experience symptoms affecting their quality of life and affected by conditions surrounding their everyday lives and to a lesser extent in uenced by information about risk [10,[37][38][39][40]. Furthermore, although the TOF pilot study provided the patients with a risk pro le and offered a digital health pro le, which they were encouraged to look through to prepare for the health dialogue, we found that the risk pro les did not affect the health dialogues as such.…”