BACKGROUND: One of the nurse’s areas of responsibility is to relieve suffering. Research has shown that nurses give an indication of an emotional load in the interaction with dying patients. This means that patients need of relieved suffering gets disregarded because of nurse’s fear of the unknown. Nurses can get an understanding through putting herself into the perspective of the patient, and through that she can reduce suffering. One way is to read autobiographies that describe experiences of diseases, which contributes to the nurse’s competence. AIM: The aim of the study was to illustrate people’s experiences of living with an incurable cancerdisease. METHOD: A qualitative literature review that was based on five phenomenological scientific articles and two autobiographies. Interpretation of the literature was based on Graneheim and Lundmans content analysis. RESULT: Two main categories for scientific articles and autobiographies developed into: "changes experiences in the relation to yourself", which included changes of identification and changes of the body and "changed experiences in the relation to others", which resulted in for example to be disregarded and to be a burden for others. CONCLUSION: The suffering can be identified and relieved if the nurses gets knowledge from patients own experiences of how to live with an incurable cancerdisease. Further research needs to be done in the topic of nursing dying patients, to acquire the knowledge needed to cope with the fear.