How do you tell a 24 year old that she is dying?

Physicians are no strangers to death. We are baptized into medicine with cadavers as first-year medical students. We learn to break bad news. We lose patients, some that are expected and some we never see coming. Through it all, we maintain a distance, an emotional reserve that enables us to shoulder these losses but still see the next patient with the full attention they deserve. But every now and then …

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