Learning Objective #1: Understand and appreciate the intense emotions women newly diagnosed with breast cancer experience

Learning Objective #2: Assist women with symptom management, symptom distress, and coping behaviors during adjuvant chemotherapy

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Purpose: To understand the lived-experience and symptom distress encountered by women with breast cancer during adjuvant treatment through interpretation of narrative stories. Design: Hermeneutic phenomenology was the interpretive approach used to understand women's experiences. Population, Sample, Setting: Purposive sampling recruited 30 women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, receiving chemotherapy at a tertiary breast-care center in Buffalo, New York. Questions: (1.) What were the common experiences and shared meanings of women with breast cancer during adjuvant treatment? (2.) What were the women's perceptions of distress related to diagnosis and symptoms experienced? Methods: Hermeneutic phenomenological approach, emphasizing the complexity of the human experience and lived-experience was used for this study. Women were interviewed and asked to tell their story about being diagnosed with breast cancer and their symptom experience. Audio-taped interviews were transcribed providing data for interpretive thematic analysis. Findings: Four themes emerged: (1.) A woman's view of the diagnosis of breast cancer affected her experience and response to symptoms/symptom distress; (2.) Symptoms of severe bone, neuropathy, taste changes and diminished attention span were most distressing, affecting functioning; (3.) Experiencing a precipitous transition from “a state of health to illness overnight based on the results of a mammogram”; (4.) Erasing former personhood by experiencing a body altering (physical and emotional) life changing illness. Conclusions: Women newly diagnosed with breast cancer experience a life transition and encounter symptoms that affect their attitude toward their body, their functioning and ultimately their quality of life. As more women become breast cancer survivors, this transition needs further exploration so that breast cancer survivors can go on to live the lives they have been given back. Implications: Nurses need to be aware of the intense emotions of women newly diagnosed with breast cancer in order to assist women to manage symptoms and symptom distress experienced during treatment.