Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

I've been watching PBS' "Cancer:  Emperor of All Maladies".  I was riveted by the book, which I read after our daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the six hour series does a faithful and powerful job of capturing the book.  Last night, when they were talking about palliative care, I wept as I saw the young doctor tell her patient he might consider foregoing further treatment and look for quality in the time he had left.  Talk about right speech.  How do give the truth to patients who might not wish to hear it?  She clearly fished around with her patients before she made suggestions and offered up the likely outcome.  That in itself is a gift.  Seeing the patient's reaction made me admire his courage so much.  He struggled to adjust his view of his future.  I saw that with my father, who at first could not hear his prognosis, especially as it came from me instead of his surgeon.  He had possibly 8 weeks to live.  Still he talked about visiting his brother in Florida for Christmas, and when he finally got angry, and went to his own physician, that doctor told him to go home and die.  So he had wrong speech at both extremes:  being unwilling to convey the news and being brutal in telling him what was so.

My own father's courage amazed me at the time.  He planned his own funeral, said his goodbyes, stopped eating and speaking much and died in 7 weeks.  Everything had been said and done and he knew it.  We would sit in silence as I rubbed his hands with cream.  The love was palpable, and I saw him slowly leave his body until he was gone, and I sat with him for hours after he'd been declared dead.  Ordinary people's courage is uplifting and amazing.  And so many face their fate with quiet determination to live and die with dignity. 

There are doctors who cannot face the fact of mortality, and either escape or are abrupt.  Then there are the mostly compassionate doctors and nurses who "see" the patient, allow themselves to become attached, to care, and and to grieve.  They are present, which is the greatest dignity you can bestow on a patient.  They do not turn away, or obsess about their own mortality; they keep the focus on the suffering of their charge.  That is respect.  And we all deserve it and should practice it ourselves.