Health in illness is based on a view of health which incorporates illness. Illness, as a meaningful aspect of health as expanding consciousness, is manifest in the quality and diversity of person-environment interaction with the environment (Newman, 1986a; 1987b). The pattern of interaction is reflected in the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) dimensions of exchanging, perceiving, moving, communicating, relating, choosing, feeling, knowing and valuing (Newman, 1984; Roy, 1984).

The purpose of this research was to explicate the view of health in illness by describing the experience of women diagnosed with breast cancer within a person-environment patterning framework. Twenty women, ages 38-60, with previously diagnosed (within 4-18 months) breast cancer were asked to describe their experience with breast cancer through two open-ended interviews. Data collection and analysis were based on existential-phenomenology (Paterson & Zderad, 1976; Valle & King, 1978; Watson, 1985) with a focus on person-environment interaction patterning (Newman, 1984). A thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews identified the experience of breast cancer as including: getting information and making choices; coping with the physical aspects; dealing with lack of control or possible recurrence; being hopeful about the prognosis and optimistic about life; changing relatedness; identifying meaning and adding new perspectives about life.

Patterning analysis of the person-environment interaction was accomplished through categorizing each statement in the transcribed data according to NANDA Taxonomy I dimensions and reducing the statements to dimension descriptions and overall descriptions for each woman. Health within the experience of breast cancer emerged as changing patterns of relating, moving, perceiving and knowing. Patterning descriptions were identified as discussing relatedness often and experiencing and showing relatedness more through cancer; having a busy, "doing for others" moving pattern and slowing down and focusing on self through cancer; identifying perceiving experiences to a greater extent through the cancer experience; and discussing knowing about self and life through increasing time spent in reflecting about life and coming to know what is meaningful. This research explicates patterning as a theoretical concept and as research methodology.