This study aimed to understand how patients with colostomy by cancer and their family members perceive the sickening process. The theoretical and methodological reference frameworks the study was based on were anthropology and ethnography. Data were collected through interviews, in a narrative form, and observations with twelve colostomy patients and five family members, in the period from June 2002 to May 2003. The analysis allowed us to understand that the experience of having a colostomy by cancer is a social-cultural construction.
colostomy; neoplasms; anthropology, cultural