When a cancer patient chooses NOT to share a fatal prognosis with family, but keeps it to himself.

A situation I came across when reading a blog on a cancer website.

An account of a cancer patient who was handling his situation all by himself, apart from his wife and others, and was reporting his status to them only as he learned it from his doctor.

It seems he learned that his status had become terminal, but he never told them.

His wife later posted how that went:

"After my husband passed away from cancer in 2017. I was cleaning out his office space and I found a letter from his cancer doctor. The letter said that his cancer was terminal and he had to 4–6 months to live and would remain on chemotherapy until then.

I knew my husband had cancer. And he told me he was just going to fight it again, like last time.

He never mentioned the letter or the diagnosis the doctor gave him. The letter was dated November 2016. My husband went into liver failure on April 9, 2017. I had no idea he was terminal so I was fighting to keep him alive. By talking to the doctors to do more. To perform the stint surgery again to unblock his bile duct. And they did that.

I believe he was in denial of dying. And also he didn’t want me or the kids spending the last 6 months of his life crying and being sad.

He took the kids skiing in Colorado in January of 2017.

We took a trip to Miami in February of 2017.

I think he knew deep down he was going to die. But accepting your own mortality is a hard thing to do for some people.

I also wanted to share this picture of the Steve and the kids in January, skiing in Colorado. This was about 3 months before he went into liver failure. To me he doesn’t look like dying man, because even if he knew he was dying, he was determined to make sure he spent time with his children, and have the best time with them. Just to focus on them and their happiness and not him and his sickness."

In this case his wife seemed to have been understanding of his decision, with her feeling about it summarized in the last sentence of the quote above.

But it could easily happen that the opposite could occur, that there could be anger and resentment on the part of the survivors if were to go this way.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME???!!!"

I suspect most of us would be in favor of telling our supporters, our family, caregivers, even friends, everything as we learned it.

But do you think there might actually be some circumstances where silence really is golden, that NOT telling them that one has only months to live might really make sense?

Perhaps a spouse is hypersensitive, and would have difficulty dealing with the knowledge. Or, as the above writer suggests, the time remaining with friends and family would be happier if ignorance is bliss.

Personally, I always told my sons (I was a widower at the time) everything, and I have always believed that that was the best way to go in my case.

But some may differ, choosing the path that what they don't know won't hurt them.

What do you think?

I fully understand this man’s decision and respect it.

I, too, withheld a diagnosis about ten years back.

Why? Because the prognosis was choked full of "ifs." "If" it went the bad route, it would have wrapped up in a short six months.

"If" it went good - - then I would so-inform my loved ones and inner circle.

I get it. I understand why some choose to remain silent. Last thing I would have wanted (or needed) was the "sayonara visits," etc.

NJ Fred

I withheld information that I had prostate cancer from my mother. My brother did the same for a couple of melanoma moles on his body. She was elderly and living alone, and we didn't want her to worry about our health status.