Abstract
This article isthe result of an ethnographic research with patients who have severe hepatic impairment and were transplanted at "Serviço de Transplante Hepático" from "HC UFPR". The research was realized with the use of the ethnographic method, having its base on the hypothesesthat the diagnosis of a chronic and serious disease when announced
by the doctors represents a traumatic event for the patient. The presence of the trauma produces a rupture on the
biographical temporality of the patient. Past and present are disconnected and the future as a project disappears giving
place to the imminence of death. The construction of a narrative about the living experience appears as a possible
strategy to solve the lack of meaning of experience. Its construction passes by vicissitudes of the difficulties that the
person has to acknowledge the traumatic event. The presence of the disease as a group of symptoms that affect the
body's image and the sick person's identity isn't solved only with the transplant, it also needs meaningful-ness. The
theoretical elements considered here for the analysis of the information are brought by Strauss(1999), Goffman (1988
e 2008), Schutz (1970 e 2003), Kleinman (1988), Rabelo ( 1999), LeBreton (2006) e Sarti (2010).