I was spending a lot of time trying to trap Dr Lara to tell me how long Elene might have left when I first arrived. Seeing a good person trying to be honest and giving hope was fun. In other words, I got a thrill watching her lying 😂.
Dr Lara and her offsider Dr Asher are teaching lessons in grace. Imagine knowing how a story will end but turning every page with a new family as if it was their first time?
Knowing ahead of time what we are seeing now is mind-blowing. The open, dry lips, the straining in her breathing and the dramatic weight loss. Indeed it almost always ends this way?
My friendship and I see it as a friendship, with Dr Lara and Dr Asher is changing. Arriving on 21 February, our sessions were full of questions. As the news getsewsretza
more grim, there’s a knowingness between us. Asking how long she has left feels wasteful.
Turns out Drs aren’t terribly good at predicting survival. A study of 112 patients with head and neck cancer showed 59% of cases had survival overestimated while a further 23% were underestimated. Only in 18% of the cases was survival correctly predicted.
Dying, like birth, knows no schedule. A process unique to each individual. Three minutes, three hours, three months. It is unknowable.
References:
1. Physicians’ Clinical Prediction of Survival in Head and Neck Cancer Patients in the Palliative Phase, BMC Palliative Care, Volume 19, Article number: 176 (2020)
Beautifully written Julie x
Thank you for expressing the vast unknowable. Powerful and humbling thought that: “Dying, like birth … is unknowable.” This grounds me like a lead weight in grief and gratitude.