OBJECTIVE: To show the experience of people suffering from fibromyalgia, through ethnography and narrative, and a reflection to raise and question the direction of professional care. METHODOLOGY: Qualitative, and within this focused ethnography, generating information through participant observation and in-depth interviews with two women and a man suffering from fibromyalgia, with analysis emerging from five units of narrative. RESULTS: Highlight the stress generated in the waiting time to diagnosis and the vital break which means the disease, the difficulty of sharing with family and friends, the conflict with the health system and the limited presence of nurses, the interest to remain active at work and personal life, although tightly constrained by the pain and discomfort, treatment adherence, aid associations representing, and thinking the present and little for the future. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnosis represents a naming an extensive upset while freeing energy of search, the little information that accompanies it difficult to handle the uncertainty and move toward a harmonious adaptation. The affected people follow the prescribed treatment, showing great interest in staying active and their pain or discomfort hamper it, they live intensely the present and think little for the future. Some nurses taking care professional current care models are suitable for individualized care in a chronic and complex illness, and the narrative is a strategy to the knowledge of the illness experience.
