The 'Career' of People with Multiple Sclerosis: Three Key Moments. The Start of the Disease to the 'Biographical Work'.

The aim of this paper is to understand how the concept of 'career' can be applied to a specific chronic disease such as multiple sclerosis. This research is focused on 'careers' as the term is used in Symbolic Interactionism in Sociology. The qualitative research is based on thirty semi-directed interviews, four group interviews with people suffering from multiple sclerosis in French hospitals and associations, and twenty-three observations made over a one-year period. Three stages in the 'careers' of the subjects showed the onset of the disease: the start of the symptoms, the announcement of the diagnosis, which confirms the entry into the disease (and defined life before and after the disease), and the preparation of the 'biographical work'. Depending on how one lives and enters into the 'careers' of the disease, such 'careers' will be more or less complex and different, as will also be the forms of biographical paths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]