Double liminality: The everyday life of people with multimorbidity in anticipation of home-based rehabilitation or home care

The number of people with multimorbidity is increasing, yet there is scant knowledge of their everyday experiences of life with multimorbidity in expectation of receiving home-based rehabilitation or home care. This article examines the everyday lives of people with multimorbidity in Denmark and their expectations for a forthcoming meeting with a municipal referrals officer to assess the person’s assistance needs and potential for home-based rehabilitation. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with people with multimorbidity who were applying for home care, receiving it temporarily, or had received it for several years. Drawing on everyday life sociology within a framework of liminality theory, the analyses centres on the lives of people with multimorbidity and their expectations, expressed as hopes, worries and strategies, prior to the assessment meeting. The analysis reveals double liminality with alternating periods of illness and stability and uncertain expectations in anticipation of home-based rehabilitation or home care. This twofold liminality has a profound impact on everyday life. The people with multimorbidity, approaching a permanent state of liminality, deal with the many illness-related disruptions in their lives with everyday life strategies in a biographical flow. The expectations for the assessment meeting are linked to hopes and worries, oriented towards restoration of the past, the present status quo or a future transition. This is reflected in strategies worked out before the meeting with the aim of escaping the liminal phase through home-based rehabilitation, trying to normalize the liminal state permanently in a biographical everyday flow or being powerlessly ‘lost in transition’.