The Lived Temporalities of Prognosis

Abstract

In this article, we explore the ways in which a man with motor neurone disease, Gareth, and his wife and carer, Maggie, enact different temporal orientations, when the expected future, an early death, does not arrive. We attend to the tensions between everyday priorities and uncertain futures to discuss the ways Gareth and Maggie negotiate action to deal with problems that are yet to come, but, despite this, already matter. We argue that prognosis thrusts people towards multiple presents and futures; while the future is fixed in time through prognosis and repaired through present action, it is also unfixed as lived experience unfolds over time. What emerges is a dialogue between multiple futures, pre-determined and uncertain, and practices that aim to repair the future, even if they cannot do so.