The article offers a critical analysis and discussion of cancer rehabilitation based on theories about rehabilitation, governance and narrative. The empirical backgrounds for the article are the authors’ ethnographic studies of cancer rehabilitation in Denmark. The authors argue that rehabilitation entails notions of normality and deviance. Furthermore, rehabilitation is creating a new discourse within the health sectors. This discourse seeks to manifest the dominant story: ,sick – helped – cured‘. This cannot be fully accomplished because rehabilitation works on the negation of disease and death through adjustment, normalisation and integration. The dominant story becomes transformed into a new story: ,sick – helped – „as if“ cured‘. In this sense, rehabilitation is stealing in between helped and cured, establishing the notion of an ,as if‘ return to ‚normal‘ existence.