Too much info, too little. Rose always wanted as much as she could get. She came to her doc armed with questions. A big issue is how does a physician talk to someone frankly about his/her illness, especially if it is finite, "possibly gone by this date. "
Here is something I heard on a news program the other night. It was a segment on how videos are being used to talk to terminally ill patients. "Got breast cancer, here's a video: lung cancer, try this." At first, I thought," this is nuts" but then they showed some clips and then interviewed some of the patients--all favorably impressed (at least those interviewed). I know for a fact that many docs stumble over what to say. The flip side is that there is no right way/best way--just a way and in my view, do the best you can. When I was at Letterman Army Medical Center as a chaplain (before it was closed and a full scale 250 bed teaching hospital), this one doc was constantly calling me to sit with him as he talked to his terminally ill patients or their families. The poor guy, here we were stumbling about with what to say and how to say it and God bless him, he is staring at his feet. I guess watching "House" might help.
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