Friday, March 30, 2007
Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow: False hope?
An op-ed in the Boston Globe:And yet Elizabeth Edwards said at a news conference, "I don't expect my life to be significantly different." She calls herself "incredibly optimistic." About his press secretary Tony Snow, President Bush said, "He is not going to let this whip him, and he's upbeat."
Of course all people need hope: hope for a good day today, hope for a normal life, and possibly hope for a cure. But that brings us to a painful and necessary question: Is there such a thing as false hope?
As a physician, I've watched more than my fair share of innocent children and adults die from cancer, often badly. It's hard to maintain optimism after that. Part of me wants to hear that not every moment with cancer can be handled with understated grace; sometimes, a primal scream would be more honest. It seems disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
Posted by Kevin |
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This is the FIRST time I've read of someone addressing what I've thought. Masses pray for adults and children who still die of cancer, good people die, bad people die, people who are incredibly hopeful die too. My mother was diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer (a never smoker) and said, very unemotionally but with understanding, acceptance and grace, "I'm going to die of this" and I'm sure not one person finds her words courageous, they're disgusted by them. Yet Dana Reeve said she would beat the same beast and died - ironically, she was 30 years younger than my mother, having afforded state-of-the-art chemotherapeutic drugs, top physicians, exercise and prayers. Oh and never mind incentive - having a 14 year old child who would be without a parent was a huge incentive my mother didn't have, as she'd raised a daughter who was already 40!
Is it so awful to cry, scream and say, I am too young to die, I have a lethal cancer but I'm too young to die; my children are still babies so I have to fight this thing with everything in me!? Is that such a bad thing? Apparently so because what you hear instead is, "I'm going to beat this thing and I'll die an old woman."
Elizabeth Edwards might want to spend a few minutes talking about how IRRESPONSIBLE her choice NOT to make time for a mammogram or a GYN exam for years was for a woman in her 50s, particularly after having received hormone therapy to have children in her late 40s. Elizabeth might want to acknowledge that it wasn't actually her fervent dedication to her family that lost her sight in having cared for her health - certainly she had time for hair coloring sessions, shopping, manicures and many other "guilty" pleasures in the years that she didn't have a mammogram. Maybe describing REGRET wouldn't sound so hollow and would impart some value to other women who could use a lesson vs. all the "everything's going to be just fine" rhetoric from Edwards.
No wonder women weren't scared into having mammograms and that the numbers - in INSURED PATIENTS - is still dismal!
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Is it so awful to cry, scream and say, I am too young to die, I have a lethal cancer but I'm too young to die; my children are still babies so I have to fight this thing with everything in me!? Is that such a bad thing? Apparently so because what you hear instead is, "I'm going to beat this thing and I'll die an old woman."
Elizabeth Edwards might want to spend a few minutes talking about how IRRESPONSIBLE her choice NOT to make time for a mammogram or a GYN exam for years was for a woman in her 50s, particularly after having received hormone therapy to have children in her late 40s. Elizabeth might want to acknowledge that it wasn't actually her fervent dedication to her family that lost her sight in having cared for her health - certainly she had time for hair coloring sessions, shopping, manicures and many other "guilty" pleasures in the years that she didn't have a mammogram. Maybe describing REGRET wouldn't sound so hollow and would impart some value to other women who could use a lesson vs. all the "everything's going to be just fine" rhetoric from Edwards.
No wonder women weren't scared into having mammograms and that the numbers - in INSURED PATIENTS - is still dismal!
# posted by 
: 9:17 AM
: 9:17 AM
