The lived body - experiences from adults with cerebral palsy.

OBJECTIVE To get a deeper understanding into how adults with cerebral palsy experience living with a disability and how they manage daily life. DESIGN Interviews with open-ended questions were carried out. They were analysed by one person according to the Empirical Phenomenological Psychological method (EPP). Setting and subjects : Twenty-two community-living adults (35-68 years) with cerebral palsy from five counties in Sweden participated. All had mobility problems and all had cognitive abilities making it possible to carry on a conversation. RESULTS The varied experiences resulted in themes including (1) perceptions of living with a disability and (2) strategies used for managing the described perceptions. The perceptions were: a dys-appearing body, a not-appearing body, difference, being in-between, normality, restricted autonomy and autonomy. The strategies were: to fight one's way, to plan, to get used to it, to hide and to give one's all. CONCLUSION These interviews expressed heterogeneity in lived experiences showing the importance for professionals to meet people with cerebral palsy as individual subjects in relation to functional problems, self-image and autonomy together with seeing the consequences of different coping strategies.