couldn't have said it better myself

Cancer pain may resolve with the patient's cure or continue indefinitely as a complication of otherwise curative therapy. Although cancer pain is often thought of as a crisis that emerges in advanced stages of disease, it may occur for many reasons and cause suffering, loss of control, and impaired quality of life throughout the patient's course of care, even for the patient whose condition is stable and whose life expectancy is long. Suffering denotes an extended sense of threat to self-image and life, a perceived lack of options for coping with symptoms or problems caused by cancer, a sense of personal loss, and a lack of a basis for hope. "Suffering can include physical pain but is by no means limited to it.... Most generally, suffering can be defined as the state of severe distress associated with events that threaten the intactness of the person.... The suffering of patients with terminal cancer can often be relieved by demonstrating that their pain truly can be controlled.
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