Saw this and thought of this discussion:
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/36273/hartreefoch,
Well, I see nothing wrong with giving the straight dope, you know? It's necessary to hear, I think. And at the same time, there is the importance of the power of the human spirit, the will to live.
I would want a doctor to tell me what he or she thought, and then I would want the doctor to shut the hell up and let me get on with my own decision. Some doctors will fight tooth and nail to try to make the patient do what the doctor thinks is right, because some doctors think they have a copyright on the truth. Seriously. And, when they are successful in their endeavors of injecting their mindset into the patient, sometimes they kill the spirit and end up killing the person.
I mean that. If you break someone's hope, their will to live, and they are terribly sick, you can kill them. That is, you can make them accept a fate instead of trying to fight and pursuing the fate they choose. And who knows? They might win. There are several cases where tenacious patients recover and they force their doctors to admit, "I can't understand it. So and so should be dead." Even then, with cases like cancer, some doctors will not put "cured" on a patient's case file. They'll put "in remission."
There was one program I saw on TV, and it had this woman who survived a cancer that her doctor told her was fatal. She chose to fight it, and the doctor fought her tooth and nail along the way. In the scene on TV they were STILL arguing over it. She had been cancer free for years and the doctor, exasperated, said, "What do you WANT?! What do you want me to do?!" and she said, "I WANT YOU TO MARK MY CASE AS CURED! Why can't you do that? Why can't you simply admit that I am better?"
He just couldn't do it.
So, you see, there is something pernicious about this tendency among some people to believe they know so much better than others. They think they've got it all down pat. They don't know when to let go and let someone do what they need to do, even if it ends up crashing and burning. At least they'll have tried.
I know most of the cases marked terminal ARE terminal. But I think the choice to fight or give in should be the domain of the patient and his or her loved ones, and I think a doctor should respect that decision and try and support the patient regardless of whether his or her choice meets the criteria of the doctor.
Todd Epstein, the partner of Robert Dilts, was an high-powered NLP guy. Robert Dilts is an NLP and health guy who helped his mom recover from cancer. Epstein died an early death from hepatitis. When people heard of it their reaction was, "WTF? Todd Epstein? Friend of Dilts? What? Couldn't NLP help?"
From reports, he *really* wanted to live, but just couldn't fight the disease. He tried. I am sure his friend Robert did the best he could to help. So, there are limitations with every approach. Doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying.
The jury isn't out until the patient is in the coffin.
The reasons why, I suspect, some doctors can be so frustratingly negative and pessimistic is because hope and hanging on takes a terrible emotional toll on the doctors, who must deal with it daily for years and years. I believe the reasons for them being the way they are are not rational; they're emotional. Giving patients the straight dope according to experience and statistics at the outset, that's rational. Once that is done, everything else is for emotional reasons. After the news is delivered and received, the rhetoric about them wanting the patient and loved ones to be rational is confabulation. The real reason is self-protection. It's easier, emotionally, to handle a case with closure than a case with ambiguity.
Congratulations on your epiphany.
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I appreciate everyone's compliments on my writing. In the future I'll probably stop being such a chicken and try to write a fantasy novel.
