Abstract
In focusing on their own life perspective, the aim of this study was to shed light on the experiences breast cancer patients confer to a stay in complementary care at an anthroposophic clinic. From a larger, matched multidisciplinary study on life situation among women with breast cancer in different systems of care, three women with breast cancer in different stages were chosen. The women had a stay for 11–13 days in an anthroposophic hospital in Sweden. Two follow-up interviews with each participant, three and six months after the stay at the clinic was analysed with interpretive phenomenological case study method. The theoretical framework of the study was Katie Erikssons' theory of caring. In the findings, the three women's experiences are described separately. Their narratives have many differences and some similarities. It seems like the individual oriented, anthroposophic care had been able to offer each of the women something that they in their actual life situation were in need of. One woman experienced the treatment with anthroposophic medicine and the confirming, holistic paradigm as significant. Another woman experienced that, the healing and loving care, had effected a changed and opened view on life. The third woman emphasised that, the experiences of harmony, wholeness, and caring relations had a meaning for her, long time afterwards. Critical aspects of the care were a lack of continuity and an ambivalent feeling about the consequences of the holistic paradigm.