Imagining Palliative Care: Ambivalence and the Meaning-Making Process

In the study presented in this article, we explored how a person diagnosed with cervical cancer, with no chance of curative treatment, imagined and reimagined palliative care. Based on sociocultural psychology, we used the concepts of ambivalence, "seeing," and "seeing-as" discussed by ABBEY and VALSINER (2005) and TATEO (2017), as analytical categories. Furthermore, the relational-historical microgenetic approach (e.g., FOGEL, GARVEY, HSU & WEST-STROMING, 2006) was utilized as a theoretical-methodological tool to examine how the oncology patient expanded her semiotic field concerning palliative care through imaginative processes (ZITTOUN, 2016). The participant was interviewed three times while she was at the oncology ward of a philanthropic university hospital in a major city in the northeastern region of Brazil. The methodological instrument "box of surprises" (BoS) (e.g., BATISTA, DE LIMA, MOUTINHO & GARVEY, 2022) was also applied to facilitate the patient's imaginative processes about palliative care as she created images using the materials in the box. We demonstrate how the ambivalence experienced by the participant toward her future opened up the opportunity for her to reimagine palliative care. We suggest that a transitional space emerged and the participant's semiotic field became more susceptible to changes as possibilities were explored through imagination.