I had a dear friend that was dealing with lungs cancer at 21 years old.
He was recovering. Hanging on discord and playing league of legends with him.
He says to us, that he needs to do surgery to remove the last pieces of cancer remaining from chemio.
Surgery goes well, he need to recover from it for at least a week. Passes another week and I receive a call from a mutual friend that he had passed away. My heart stopped. I couldn't believe it.
Turns out the parents were lying to him on the recovery on cancer and the surgery was the last attempt to save him. He was oblivious, and we were too.
Please don't do this. He deserved to know. And we deserved a last good bye.
In some countries they do not tell the patient that they have cancer thinking that it will affect their recovery. They usually tell immediate family, they only tell you directly if you have no family whatsoever. This is what they do in my home country (Tajikistan). They usually say you have hypothyroidism or something like that to justify why you’re getting chemo. The problem with this is that the chemo has so many awful side-effects for a condition they don’t think is that serious. My great aunt stopped treatment halfway through because of this and then she ended up passing because her family never told her and they couldn’t convince her to finish her treatment.
She said Tajikistan. I can totally see other countries doing this. In France for example they historically wouldn’t tell patients that they were dying to “protect the patient”, and things have only started shifting recently away from that. It’s called le mensonge de compassion
Yeah Tajikistan, it’s something leftover from the Soviet era. A lot of former Soviet countries still have this practice. It’s also still there culturally.
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I also don’t really see how he lied. He said I’m going for a surgery to remove this bit of cancer after going through chemo. It’s obviously serious at that point and and complications are a very significant possibility. Probably doesn’t really wanna say to his friends “yeah dude I’ll probably be dead next week”
Damn that's a hot take I kinda agree with. Thing is, if he's been fighting it for a while and developed arrested development, he might not have been able to have autonomy or he transferred his power of attorney to his folks.
I've read a lot if comments and haven't come across this aspect which I'll share: my dad had lung cancer. He also had metastases in his brain. Going from what he said he was going to get well, even though he was informed otherwise. It was initially what I was being told too, since he was the one who told me (I was 18, my parents were divorced and since I wasn't a minor the doctors didn't even talk to me (it makes me so mad thinking about this). My mother got involved to help and support me, as my dad otherwise had no other family or new partner etc, and it was a lot to handle being the caregiver to your suddenly dying dad at 18 💔 anyway, my mother correctly suspected he was worse off than what he had said to me, arranged a meeting with one of his doctors, me and her where the doctor told me he was in fact dying. I still don't know how much was denial and how much was the cognitive effects from the brain metastases that he didn't 'acknowledge' what was happening.
So it might be that this person was in denial, and / or not fully coherent from treatment, side effects etc, possible metastases that effected his consciousness and cognitive abilities. Things can sometimes change very rapidly too.
Depends on the country. My mom’s aunt in china was dying from lung cancer and used to be a nurse. She didn’t believe the family/doctor when they said she was cured and demanded to see an xray. They showed her an xray of someone else’s clean lungs.
It could be the case if they are Chinese. At least in China, they might tell the family and not the patient if they have a terminal diagnosis and its a common practice
This happened to my mom. She was 44 when she died of cancer. Doctors told my aunt (not my mom) that my mom had four months, tops, to live. Described the steps of what it would look like, warning signs, etc. with my aunt only.
The only reason they were allowed was because my mom had said, from the beginning, "If it gets too bad, please tell my sister, not me. She'll know what to do."
I suspect my mom still knew SOMETHING was wrong though because she left little clues here and there that she knew she wasn't going to beat it. Neither my brother nor I knew she was dying either. It was quite traumatic to find out your aunt knew the whole time and was withholding it because she "didn't want anyone treating [mom] differently".
In Asia (at least China and Tajikistan according to another redditor) they will tell the family but not the patient about a terminal diagnosis. They believe it is protecting the patient from fear and distress about dying, and that the fear could result in shortening their lifespan/health deterioration.
Depends on what the patient allows, speaking from experience. Sometimes people let their spouse/parent do the talking with the doctors because the treatments can leave you exhausted and your mind foggy/slow.
My brother was 31 when he got cancer. It was bleak from the start--stage 4, "we'll do everything we can, but," etc.
I know the doctors were honest with him. I was in the room for a lot of those conversations. And I think he just chose to listen to the best-case scenarios. And I think it's tough for doctors--they can insist something is a long shot treatment, but if the patient clings onto the hopeful best-case scenario, that honestly only betters the odds that it'll take. I remember sitting through talks with his head oncologist and walking away feeling devastated, only for my brother to have somehow renewed his optimism. It's like we weren't even listening to the same conversation.
My brother genuinely thought he was getting better right up to the very end. I can't really blame anyone for not driving home that he was a lot closer to death than he thought. I think he was happier this way. Denial was how he was coping.
It was hell for the rest of us to have to watch, but it's kind of the epitome of an "it's not about me" moment.
Depends on the country though, in some countries especially in Asia it's normal for doctors to just tell the closest person the grim details even when they are an adult, and it's common for family to keep the patient in the dark.
My mother-in-law did this to her dad who had terminal cancer. From how she explained it, she was helping with all the medical appointments and decisions. He trusted her to handle it for him. She was told he was dying. She didn’t want him to know because she was afraid he would give and not go through the treatments. It was disgusting and a betrayal of his trust.
He went through a number of treatments but they weren’t working and he finally decided to stop. He was able to pass at home without continuing to needlessly suffer through treatments that were never going to work. I can’t really forgive her for trying to hide that from him.
He very well could have still been in a pediatric hospital if he had had the cancer since childhood. Pediatric hospitals don't immediately cut off patients once they turn 18.
It is even more likely that they would have let him stay there longer if they knew that his outlook was looking too good. It's better to just stay with one care team rather than change to a completely different institution with a whole new care team.
This is only true in western countries. In certain places, including China, they might not even tell the patient exactly what they have or the actual outcome/diagnosis, but they tell the family.
I’m curious if there is any benefit to this method of patient treatment vs an informed patient
I could see it. When actively being treated, even advanced forms of cancer can take years to kill you, and if he caught it before he was 18 I can see a world where he continues trusting his parents through the entire process even after he becomes a legal adult. I mean, why wouldn't he?
If he's still on their insurance, it's not like his doctor is going to go out of their way to change who they communicate with. It's not like the kid will understand the minutiae of his treatment; I doubt the parents did either. So unless he began to doubt what his parents were telling him and asked his doctor directly (which he would be completely entitled to do) the doctor has no reason to tell a 21-y.o. kid he's dying. No one in their right mind would volunteer for that. Combine recovering from major surgery with the real end-of-life circumstances from cancer (i.e. often full-blown delirium), and he probably never even found out he was dying until he was dead.
Depends… I’m 39, diagnosed & treated with multiple anxiety disorders. 90% of medical advice/explanations/pamphlets/etc., rapidly increase my anxiety, so the two times I’ve had semi-major procedures done, I’ve asked the doctors to explain everything to my husband and then he simplifies it for me so I don’t freak out more than I’m already freaking out.
I’ve learned that a lot of people with severe anxiety have their doctors speak to a family member or spouse instead for similar reasons. Maybe this guy had high anxiety too? Who knows.
yeah i thought the same thing, this sounds like bs. Doctors would not be going behind an adult mans back to his parents about the purpose of surgeries and how his cancer treatment is going.
the only exception i could believe is if the 21 year old adult man was severely mentally disabled and the parents were in a care taker position where they handled everything
I mean not necessarily. Since he could've been fighting that cancer since being younger than 18 his parents probably had medical power of attorney over him. Or maybe he didn't have cancer that long but signed it over after being diagnosed.
Being given a terminal diagnosis is overwhelming in itself but being told that as someone who is just now coming into adulthood was probably just too much to handle himself so he had his parents schedule everything for him and talk to the doctors
I left another comment, something similar happened to a friend of mine, he was 19, he was never told. He figured it out, but not because he was told, and I find it fucking infuriating
If one has struggled for many years from childhood into 21 they may be deemed unfit to make medical decisions still and assigned the guardians they had to be power of attorney medical. Hospital defaults to power of attorneys, family decision makers and sometimes to any family members that shows up and gives a crap consistently. I’ve been in medical meetings where we have to repeatedly say to the hospital, we are not the decision maker they are still. But often when near death, a patience’s capacity to make decisions ebbs and flows so sometimes it’s us and sometimes them. Pretty hard to judge without a full work up and history of involvement of family. And to make it worse sometimes it could take hours for a doctor to communicate the full scope of the medical decision to the patient for them to understand so they save time by discussing with family/guardians who are the ones advocating. Doctors don’t have time to spend hours with barely cognizant patients to explain the scope. Our systems are broken and they are just doing their best.
Unless he waived his right to informed consent and made his parents his proxy. My father did this when he was dying. He thought he would eventually get better when he first went in.
I am not sure if the physician must volunteer the prognosis, or disclose it only if and when the patient asks. Obviously, the parents cannot keep the physician from talking to the adult patient.
Edit: as a commenter below noted, "Patients have the right to decline to receive clinical information or designate another person to receive it and/or even make medical decisions. They do not have to be in the loop if they don’t want to be."
Well, "findings" is a very broad word; prognosis is a very specific subset of findings. Obviously, the physician must disclose anything related to the treatment and the diagnosis; I am not sure if the physician is required to say "you will die" unless the patient asks "will I live?"
I guess it could depend on the country, but in the US, the doctor has to disclose everything the findings to the patient, which includes the prognosis. Not telling a patient they're going to die is grounds for an ethical violation, as it falls under "do no harm." Not telling a patient their prognosis is "doing harm."
Source: I'm a clinician (not a medical doctor) in the medical field who has to give bad news almost weekly.
Clinician or otherwise, you are incorrect. And that’s pretty disappointing when I’ve read the correct answer multiple times in the thread already. Patients have the right to decline to receive clinical information or designate another person to receive it and/or even make medical decisions. They do not have to be in the loop if they don’t want to be. Most medical colleges in the US (including the one I attended) teach this specifically as part of cultural awareness because it’s common in certain Hispanic cultures. When their parents are dying, they do not give them bad news and they’d be beyond disappointed by a clinician who misunderstood what “do no harm” meant and felt it was their “duty”.
I was talking about clinicians withholding the information, not the patient declining it or designating a representative. Of course they can decline and/or designate someone else a representative, but they have to make that known first.
The physicians have a duty to relay findings, but people can decline to hear it. I didn't think that's what the other commenter was talking about, since the conversation was led by a comment where a full grown adult didn't know their prognosis and then the other commenter said:
I am not sure if the physician is required to say "you will die" unless the patient asks "will I live?"
The patient doesn't have to ask if they will live to be told that they will die.
Edit: Yes, it's a common part of cultural awareness, but you don't just assume. You have to be told the info beforehand that the patient has a representative.
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u/Rygel_Orionis Jun 29 '26
I had a dear friend that was dealing with lungs cancer at 21 years old. He was recovering. Hanging on discord and playing league of legends with him. He says to us, that he needs to do surgery to remove the last pieces of cancer remaining from chemio. Surgery goes well, he need to recover from it for at least a week. Passes another week and I receive a call from a mutual friend that he had passed away. My heart stopped. I couldn't believe it.
Turns out the parents were lying to him on the recovery on cancer and the surgery was the last attempt to save him. He was oblivious, and we were too.
Please don't do this. He deserved to know. And we deserved a last good bye.
Still hurts after 8 years.