O artigo pretende formular cinco leis essenciais que possam servir para caracterizar a temporalidade imanente peculiar da dor física. As três primeiras leis são comuns a inúmeras experiências de consciência: natureza cursiva da dor, ou não instantaneidade do fenómeno; natureza atual da dor, no sentido em que o decurso anterior de retenção não é adicionado de forma cumulativa à impressão de sofrimento; caráter mutável de todo processo doloroso, que nunca pára. A quarta lei refere-‑se a como o presente doloroso não (...) se integra ao seu próprio passado numa manifestação coerente, mas resulta num longo agora que flui desajeitadamente, ora estagnando sobre si mesmo ora excitando ou persistindo. A dor não carece de uma “figura de tempo”, mas decompõem-‑na a todo o momento e é essencialmente arrítmica. A quinta lei assume uma contingência particular na duração efetiva da dor, que pode ser de curta duração, breve ou interminável. As duas últimas leis, profundamente “antimusicais”, permitem falar de uma temporalidade amorfa do sofrimento. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between temporal continuity in nursing and temporal features of sickness. It is based on phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy, empirical studies of sickness time, and the nursing theories of Nightingale, of Benner and of Benner and Wrubel. In the first part, temporal continuity is defined as distinct from interpersonal continuity. Tensions between temporal continuity and discontinuity are discussed in the contexts of care management, of conceptualisations of disease and of time itself. Temporal limitations to the methodological (...) concept of situation are discussed. The main part of this paper explores nurses' possibilities to relate to their patients' time, and how temporal features of sickness may warrant temporal continuity of nursing. Three temporal characteristics of sickness are discussed: the immediacy of patients' suffering, the basic continuity of life through sickness and health care, and the indeterminism and precariousness of sickness. The timing of nursing acts is discussed. The paper explores how sickness is both part of the continuity of life, and threatens this continuity. It concludes that this tension is implicitly recognised in the temporal continuity of nursing, which allows for discontinuous and continuous aspects of sickness time. Nurses accordingly perceive the sick person's time at several levels of temporality, and distinguish highly complex temporal processes in their patients' trajectory. Temporal continuity provides the time, flexibility, and closeness for nurses to perceive and act into time dimensions of individual sickness. The paper shows that temporal continuity of nursing is grounded in temporal characteristics of severe sickness. It suggests that temporal continuity is an important theoretical concept in nursing. (shrink)

What is characteristic of being aParkinson’s patient? This article intends toanswer this question by means of an analysis ofnovels about people with Parkinson’s disease,personal accounts, and scientific publications.The texts were analyzed from anexistential-phenomenological perspective, usingan adapted version of the existential analysis.Being a Parkinson’s patient is apparentlycharacterized by an existential paradox: lifeappears simultaneously immobile andunpredictably whimsical. This may manifestitself in the person’s corporeality, in hisbeing-in-time and in-space, in his relating tothings and events, his life-world, and in hisbeing-together-with-others as an individual.Finally, some (...) specific characteristics of beinga Parkinson’s patient are described that may berelevant for purposes of adequate care, as isto be specified by further research. (shrink)