When it’s Your Wife…

In a painfully honest and moving essay entitled “The Day I started Lying to Ruth“, physician Peter Bach chronicles his gradual evolution from the oncologist who couldn’t understand why his patients would continue to seek treatment for a disease that was inevitably fatal Each successive change [of treatment] brings more side effects with less chance of benefit… the cancer gets smarter, the treatments get dumber. Somewhere in this progression the trade-off no longer makes sense … I’ve often thought that cancer doctors go well past that point. to the husband who, along with his wife, grasped at any options made available to them, whether or not they provided a chance for cure. None of that mattered to me, the medical professional to whom all these nuances and trade-offs should. All I could think about was the blood test telling us the tumor marker was too high. With that, any dreamy conceit—that patients should be given enough knowledge that they can weigh the risks and benefits for themselves, then come to the choice that best suits them—flew out the window. Our choice wasn’t a choice. Take the chemo…. I will never again be mystified, as I had been with many patients, by why someone who is at the precipice of death seeks out yet another shot at treatment, even with something harmful that has a near-zero chance of helping. “Why not?” was suddenly a winning argument. Bach’s story will be all too familiar to those of us who have...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - Category: Primary Care Authors: Tags: Second Opinions cancer Peter Bach Wife Source Type: blogs