[B]ecoming ill (especially chronically, or seriously ill) colours people's lives. The use of the word ‘colours’ refers to the way that everyday life is reflected through either the knowledge that one is ill, or the way that ordinary actions are affected by bodily limitations … Illness, once given form by the social realm that it metaphorically colours, can then inflect other domains of experience with new meaning. In turn, they provide another reflection upon the illness situation, so that it, too, is once more re-figured … Because it is always reflected through social realms, and because the reflection of these realms, one against the other, is the way in which individuals display their worth and competence, then being ill is not a specific state, but an inflection of the whole of the person's being.