My sister Jenny is not in the best of her mood recently.
Her best friend, PM, whom I also know personally, has colon cancer at the age of 40.
To complicate the matter, our friend is living alone in another country. (She communicates with my sister largely by SMS and emails.)
From what I was told, surgery was done a few months ago, which was followed by chemotherapy. Nonetheless, the tumor seemed to have spread to other organs. The decision now is apparently whether she should have another surgery or further chemotherapy.
"A losing battle," I said to myself.
But it is not easy to ask our friend to surrender. She does the best of what an educated patient could do: gets a detailed explanation from her doctor, searches for relevant information from all on-line resource, reads up medical books (she is a chemical engineer by training and has an exceptional capability of understanding jargon), and weights carefully the pros and cons of the two treatment options.
And, naturally, she also asks for my opinion via my sister.
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1 comment:
What strikes me as strange (though perhaps it is simply an emotional reaction overcoming logic), is that it doesn't occur to them that it is not possible to arrive at any well-informed medical opinion without the details (for such intelligent people)? Or why that the statement of a sometimes unknown professional on the newspaper is more worthy than the other numerous doctors that they have shopped for?
Realistically though, the "just follow" mantra is a bit difficult to preach sometimes (especially when it is a lose-lose situation), even if it is the only way.
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