I often ask patients about their experiences with chronic diseases or devastating diagnoses. I recently had a conversation with one of them about her cancer diagnosis. We talked about her family's and friends' reactions when she told them and what they said that made her feel better or worse.It seems that people who say things like: "Look on the bright side," or "There is a lesson in this," are no good to any patient. People who say that do not understand the enormity of the situation or do not stop and think how this might make the patient feel. When newly diagnosed cancer patients are not feeling optimistic or like they are learning something from the experience, words like these only add another negative feeling: guilt.
The patient that I talked to,as well as some of my friends, say there are things that helped. People who said: "This sucks. You do not deserve this," or "I will do...," and came up with a concrete plan for support, helped a lot. People who just listened and let the cancer patient rage and be sad and go through all the emotions they had, without judgment , helped the most.
Sometimes not saying anything and just being there is the best. What things that people said made you feel better?
1. Educating those who have the ears to listen is not always an easy task. Medicine is often so slow to change, it ends up taking creative and independent individuals to start the real changes. One needs to start somewhere, helping patients conceptualize cancer more accurately, so they could better understand the way to approach their choice of treatment regime.
Posted at 12:33PM on Jun 24th 2007 by Gregory D. Pawelski