With one patient with a brain tumour I will be trying to explain that his or her life is probably coming to an end, or that they require terrifying surgery to their brain, whereas with the next I will be telling them, struggling to appear sympathetic and uncritical, that their backache is perhaps not as terrible a problem as they feel it to be and that life can perhaps be worth living despite it. Some of the conversations I have in the clinic are joyful and some absurd and others can be heart-breaking. They are never boring.
