A friend of a friend was in a support group for cancer therapy. Everyone made an image to represent pain. The one I saw was an appliqued wasp, which certainly represented pain for me.
However, my doc has a very large number of quilts in his office. His Mil makes them. Their purpose is distractive. I think I posted my garden maze quilt. Several years back, my teacher made a spectacular one with oriental fabrics for her DH's oncologist, who posted that in her office.