Patient viewpoint: A reconstruction

In this chapter a patient tells about the course and the inner experiences of his own disease. After introducing himself, he successively dwells upon the loss of salaried work and what that meant to him, the loss of physical strengths and capacities, the experience of the hospital as an organization, the influence of psychosocial factors and the decline of a marriage of many years. Finally, some recommendations are made with special reference to the major importance that (disease-specific) patient organizations might have, for instance, for coping with the disease.