Finding luck (or hope) in diagnosis

[Function]

Hello

 

Seems like I'm on a psychology thread streak

 

Allow me to ask for the existance of a certain phenomenon ... I perhaps have the misconception of having to name anything that differs or deviates from what is generally perceived as 'normal' (as much as I hate that term).

 

In communication sessions, we're taught how to react empathically etc. i.e. naming the perceived emotions of others. And I have the opinion that, when diagnosing someone with something that we consider tragic, dramatic, ..., you may easily go wrong. Especially in patients as the imagined case below.

 

Imagine this: a 50-year old lady comes to your office with general, vague symptoms: headache, decreased appetite, something she describes as dyspnea, lack of energy, emotionally flattened, ... and she's been having these symptoms for a few years now. The doctors she consulted thusfar have advised her to go and do some exercise, that her symptoms are most likely stress-related.

You perform some tests, including laboratory tests and some scans (let's not be medically correct here, this thread is for the sake of psychology), and you have to diagnose the lady in front of you with metastatic breast cancer (metastasized to, amongst others, liver and brain). You know that she won't have much more time to live and you have to tell her this. She lets a tear and grabs a tissue.

 

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You have to react empathically. Let's say you have to name her primary emotion. I'd say please don't crib below, but since this isn't a true-or-false thread, I can't blame you for doing so. I'm just eager to know what you'd, intuitially, say or do.

 

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Think with me now, can anyone imagine this lady to be relieved? Instead of dramatically affected with the death warrant you just made her aware of? Instead of the sorrow and pain most of us would have, perhaps even express?

 

This lady's been having symptoms affecting her life every day for a few years now. Even knowing that she won't have much more time to go, might she even be a bit relieved, knowing that her symptoms are not imagined whatsoever, are now objectively ascertainable and that there is proof that there is indeed something wrong, and that, maybe, with a bit of luck, those symptoms affecting her daily lifestyle, might be tempered with the right medication, allowing her to live a more normal life, for even the short time remaining?

 

Insights, opinions, points of view, all welcome.

 

-F.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Function