English
This article aims to look at how a major health event (cancer) can alter adolescents experience of school, by trying to sketch its long-term implications. The study is based on a mixed methodology, including three years of socio-ethnographic research in treatment centres and schools. It demonstrates to what extent the experience of school is shaped by the temporalities of school in the context of a chronic serious illness. In the short-term, the illness is perceived as a parenthesis, but the effects of managing it socially can make it become a disability.