Several individuals with breast cancer and other potentially fatal disorders have talked to me recently about the noted author Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book. Their understanding is that she is saying, "Being positive is not going to help you". The author has written some excellent books in the past so I don't understand why she would write such a negative book. Having cared for countless patients with progressive or potentially fatal diseases, I think hope is a very, very important emotion. I have always told patients that a new discovery or medicine could make all the difference to them and we never know which researcher will have an answer. When I was a pediatric resident, leukemia in children was almost always fatal in the early years. Now most patients are living good lives after their early treatments. If patients lose hope and become depressed, their lives usually go from bad to worse. Some even try to commit suicide.
I wonder if the author is angry about her own diagnosis and sees no hope? There are some amazing medical accounts of patients who have done exceptionally well despite an early diagnosis of a potentially fatal disorder or disease. I think we all need to be both hopeful and realistic about life. Otherwise the day to day struggles seem hardly worthwhile.
I think, too, that we all need to be careful about how we view people with a medical diagnosis such as breast cancer or for example, a muscle disease. The words "victim", "battling a disease", "you are sick", and the very limiting word, "wheelchair bound", should be eliminated from everyone's vocabularly. Hope and the right words can make a great difference in the life of anyone with a serious medical condition.
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Posted by: Aftab | October 30, 2009 at 02:34 PM