Cancer

I spend more time than I would like having to tell patients they have cancer. On good days, it starts with "you have lung cancer", but finishes with "but it looks as if we found it early enough to help". Today was not one of the good days. I am sure there has to be a way to tell a 50 year old person and their family that they have an incurable, terminal disease without devastating them, but I haven't found it yet.

My least favorite question - how long do I have? I expend a great deal of energy dodging that question. For starters, people don't come with expiration dates. I can quote literature about what the average life expectancy is for someone with certain stages of lung cancer, but we, despite all our wisdom and tests, have absolutely no idea how that number pertains to the individual patient in front of us. Secondly, navigating the tight rope between hope and false hope is difficulty enough. Putting a time limit on the situation never helps.

Obviously not having a good day professionally. Ironically, personally I found out today that my own biopsy results are benign. At least I saved one of my colleagues "the talk".