The course of chronic illness is unpredictable and extremely varied, and its connection to grief and loss has heretofore been vague. Some losses experienced by patients are permanent, while others are not. Still others experience a loss of self, going from 'normal' to the state of semi-invalidity in the course of a day. Ranjan Roy is recognized as one of the leading experts in chronic pain, and in Chronic Pain, Loss, and Suffering -- the first book of its kind -- he attempts to describe the complexity that surrounds the issues of loss in the chronically ill population. Unlike the suffering that occurs with the death