Abstract

This article analyses the everyday experiences of lower limb amputees with prosthesis during the first eighteen months after rehabilitation. It is based on an ethnographic and longitudinal research carried out with fourteen patients whose lower limb(s) has or have been recently amputated. Grounded in semi-directive interviews conducted one year and a half after the end of their rehabilitation ended, this study specifically focuses on the cross-analysis of the amputees’ discourses and feedback regarding their daily experiences of, and accommodation to, a prosthesis. In this article, daily life with a prosthesis is analysed from two different points of view. The first one concentrates on the everyday uses of the prosthesis and its repercussions in relation to experiences of disability. The second one deals with the various strategies that amputees use in social interactions, particularly the strategies they use to manage the visibility and/or invisibility of the prosthesis to deal with the pressure of normalcy.