Technology and care in a bone marrow transplant unit: creating and assuaging vulnerability.

The article describes the experience of technologically induced vulnerability and the inherent uncertainty of patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation. Examples of care by nurses, as perceived by patients and their family members, are offered. The relationship between the iatrogenic vulnerability and suffering of patients and the nursing response of care is explored. The claim is made that a caring response by nurses enables patients to make meaning of their choice to undergo simultaneously life-saving and life-threatening bone marrow transplantation.