"Doctors claim that patients aren’t ready for the bad news earlier, when they are still digesting their shocking predicament: that their lives have changed irre

"Doctors claim that patients aren’t ready for the bad news earlier, when they are still digesting their shocking predicament: that their lives have changed irretrievably; that their priorities, their future aspirations, their promises to their loved ones—both the explicit and, more important, the implicit ones—would go unfulfilled. They cite their own hesitations too. Doctors want to be purveyors of hope rather than despair, a motive sometimes attributed to compassion, sometimes to a starker concern that patients will find a new, more optimistic second opinion." This is something that hits home very deeply. My father just passed away from Melanoma. When we first learned the news our oncologist was very hopeful that we could treat the disease but later we met with a specialist in the area and he was very blunt about my fathers future death. I felt as if the oncologist lied to us. She didn't give us the whole story on how severe the cancer was. Maybe if she did we would of been more proactive to treating it. I can't imagine what can go through a doctors mind when they see the scans and try to explain that to their patients day after day. How do you decide what is the best way, should you be blunt? or should you give the patient hope? Too many difficult decisions for one person to make.