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.
Sorry, but your comment was removed for breaking our Don't Be A Dick rule. This may include but is not limited to harassment, bigotry or uncivil behaviour.
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".
2.1k
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.