Existential and clinical uncertainty in the medical encounter: An idiographic account of an illness trajectory defined by inflammatory bowel disease and avascular necrosis

Uncertainty has been a central theme in the sociology of medicine. Scholars have focused on the existential uncertainty which is an aspect of the illness experience, and on the clinical uncertainty which marks the diagnosis and treatment of disease. However, there are few intensive examinations of how existential and clinical forms of uncertainty mutually affect each other. This essay draws on a personal experience of illness with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and avascular necrosis (AVN), and on the clinical record of how these diseases were diagnosed and treated, in order to demonstrate that these two forms of uncertainty, by continuously playing to and playing off each other, mutually shape the nature of the medical encounter.