Introduction:

In Colombia, breast cancer has an incidence of 32.6/100000 inhabitants and a mortality rate of 9.5/100000. 60% of cases are detected at an advanced stage, therefore, mastectomy is considered 1.

Objective:

To recognize personal experiences of four women who underwent mastectomy.

Materials and methods:

Comprehensive study with a qualitative approach, in which four women participated voluntarily, narrating their experiences through in-depth interviews. Stories are presented in first person, and had a length of two hours of direct recording. Every woman told her experiences from the time of diagnosis until returning to daily activities. A record of each person was obtained and transcribed digitally for three types of reading: intuitive, analytical and thoughtful.

Results:

The stories of the participants generated self-portraits that registered their scars, anxieties and fears seen on their bodies in an overlapping manner: the feelings and experiences that led them to the re-significance of their corporeality and subjectivity.

Conclusion:

This work accomplished an advance in physiotherapy knowledge, since it provides a different approach that decentralizes the organizational structure of the body, in order to recognize the social individual -women who have a mastectomy- and to give importance to their experiences, considering an organic disease that inevitably changes the relationship between women, the meaning of their bodies and the construction of their corporeality and subjectivity.

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