This text has no resolution at all, and neither does it present a potentially concluding either-or decision as so many acute cases do. Because the story of chronic illness offers no closure, and because pain seems to be influenced by a multiplicity of factors that co-exist in the patient s life, management decisions tend to be as much about lifestyle as about medical treatments. For this reason, it is essential that patient and health care team are agreed on what the patient s life experience, beyond the immediate realm of organic illness, consists of. When the problem is pain, this is easier said than done, for pain adds further problem to the narrative difficulties of chronic illness, disrupting not the structure of the story but its actual telling. This is the notorious difficulty that exists in communicating the experience of pain.
Textual analysis reveals an impoverished language for describing pain.
As a literary narrative, it would allow the reader to identify with the patient more effectively if his experience were described from his point of view, if we were given some insight into what the pain feels like. The patient s stories provide important clues which, coupled with scientific examination, enable the physician to acquire physiological knowledge about the patient. Equally important is the role of narrative in developing the physician s empathy for the patient. Comprehending the meaning of the patient s words and understanding his or her feelings enables a productive doctor-patient relationship to develop. This, in turn, will maximize the information the patient gives to the physician, and will probably impact on the patient s attitude to his or her illness, facilitating response to and cooperation in pain management.