ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of Pat, Who is a 36-year-old woman, married, with two sons aged 12 and 9 years. She had problems with her bowels for several months before some rectal bleeding made her see her general practitioner. Investigations revealed a carcinoma of the sigmoid colon with liver metastases. She copes by maintaining a level of denial and refuses to tell her sons. She tends not to complain of pain, but grimaces whenever she sits down. Severity is the least important in deciding treatment, with two exceptions: pain of such severity that it demands an immediate response and when one need to convince a colleague that a patient has pain.
