This study addresses the patient's inner experience of illness, analyzing an aspect too often overlooked or outright denied in healthcare protocols: something we have dubbed an "injury to identity." For illness often leads to a process of intimate self-devaluation in the patient, feelings of failure that can have a profound impact on self-esteem. Effects from the physical changes that illness imposes can extend far beneath the surface, causing deep-seated turmoil and distress, sometimes even verging on self-hatred.