The patient thought he had only 6 months left, and subsequently lived it up:
When doctors diagnosed cancer and told John Brandrick that he had less than a year to live, he resolved to make the most of the time he had left.The 62-year-old council worker quit his job, sold his car, stopped paying his mortgage and dug into his life savings so he could treat himself and relatives to expensive restaurant meals.
He even sold all his clothes but for the black suit in which he expected to be buried.
A year later, however, with no sign of the Grim Reaper coming to call, he went for tests – which gave him a clean bill of health. He had never had cancer at all.
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{ 10 comments }
“stopped paying his mortgage”
I was not aware that a terminal diagnosis was a license to terminate one’s morals as well.
By the way, he’s suing the NHS.
Great. Now they are suing doctors for telling someone they DONT have cancer??? People are out of control.
I love the line where he says “Its MY fault”, and the the VERY next line is “THEY should pay”.
What a subhuman being.
“Mr Brandrick decided his priority was to spend time with his partner of 16 years, Sally Laskey, which is why he gave up work, sold his car and stopped paying the mortgage.”
And what was to become of his partner when he was done blowing through all the dough?
If these are these things he wanted most to do with his time and money, then he should have been doing them all along anyway. One problem is that most of us do NOT live with an awareness of our impending death. We live instead as if we can put all the important things off until later.
Regarding paying his mortgage, well I agree with kip, why would he feel entitled to not pay his debts just because he is dying? He hired the money didn’t he? Would he stiff the housekeeper if he knew he was going to die next week? Most decent men want to settle their debts to not leave their kids a mess to clean up. The first and last acts of charity are to clean up your own messes.
This happens all the time–false positive cancer diagnosis that is. Most people aren’t so childish about it, continue paying their mortgage, and, upon getting a reprieve, realize that is it only a temporary abeyance of the sentence we are all under and are thankful for what they learned about what is really important.
“This happens all the time–false positive cancer diagnosis that is”
Actually as an Oncologist that is simply not true. A diagnosis of cancer is made based on pathology…period. We can quibble about CT scans that look like cancer and I have been referred patients who have been told they have cancer without pathologic diagnosis but the simple fact is I (and every single oncologist I have ever associated with) will not say someone has a definitive diagnosis of cancer without pathology.
I don’t feel any more sorry for this man than if he had decided to spend what he thought were his last days robbing banks and spending money. What he did was irresponsible. Who did he think would make up for the loss of his unpaid mortgage? The bank? No, the interest-paying borrowers of other mortgages.
When he wasn’t getting worse, did he wonder whether the diagnosis was a little too pessimistic? Perhaps that might have been the time to get a second opinion.
Blaming his reckless behavior on the doctors and hospital is just a grotesque refusal to accept responsibility for his own bad behavior. Getting your affairs in order in anticipation of terminal illness is one thing, treating the knowledge of impending death as a license to be reckless is completely different. This guy does not deserve a cent.
Every single one of you seem to be missing the BIG point. The man was told he was dying from a horrible disease and you all seem to think that isn’t a problem. Forget about what he did after he was told that it isn’t the issue.
Now, if I was told that, I certainly wouldn’t chose to live the way he did, but being told you will be dead within a year from a TERMINAL cancer diagnosis is totally wrong, if it is not true.
There can not ever be anything good come to change the mess medicine is in today, because all you doctors band together no matter how wrong something is. It is NEVER your fault, even when it CLEARLY is.
Well thanks anon 5:32 as one of the “you doctors” I definitely appreciate the prejudgement for every bad experience anyone has ever had with an individual doctor. Why don’t you insert any other profession, race, national origin in for doctor to see how assinine your statement is. With respect to this case, if the guy was told definitively he had cancer without a pathologic diagnosis (ie. a piece of the cancer), than that is wrong. But the fact is you, I, nor anyone else here has any idea what really happened in this piece of sloppy, poorly researched reporting.
From the article states he never had a f/u biopsy (the first was non-diagnostic). Was this because the doc screwed up and did not order it. Was it because the patient refused the f/u biopsy. Was it for another reason. No one knows. you may think it is “clearly” the docs fault but you don’t know now do you.
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