Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how people find ways to manage ‘the uncertain body’ that emerges from a diagnosis of cancer risk. Through the care provided by virtual support groups, a diagnosis that once provoked fear for many can come to generate hope for those who learn to trust the biomedical imaginary.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the UK, this paper explores how people find ways to manage ‘the uncertain body’ that emerges from a diagnosis of cancer risk. For many, a diagnosis of Barrett’s oesophagus, a risk state for oesophageal cancer, initially provokes fear and uncertainty. This fear manifests in their practices – some lose sleep, become acutely aware of their bodily sensations, or consumed by thoughts of a cancerous future. I explore how people manage this fear through care in the form of virtual support groups. Here, people learn to live with the uncertainty of a life lived ‘at risk’. While a diagnosis of risk often induces fear, with this support, it can be transformed into a reason for hope. ‘You’re one of the lucky ones’, members of the group explain to the newly diagnosed, highlighting that their diagnosis means their risk is now being reduced and ‘we're unlikely to get it and, in that rare case where someone does, it will be found soon enough to be removed.’ Through eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in support groups for ‘Barrett’s patients’, we see uncertain futures become increasingly certain through a belief in the promise of early detection and the biomedical imaginary. With this, risk diagnoses that once provoked fear can generate hope. The paper raises questions about what it means to provide ‘care’ in the context of increasingly risk-centred medicine, as well as who is responsible for providing care, particularly in the context of unprecedented pressures on healthcare systems globally.