Practice
What Your Patient is Thinking
Assuming the worst
BMJ 2019; 364 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l788 (Published 13 March 2019) Cite this as: BMJ 2019;364:l788- Daksha Trivedi, senior research fellow
- Centre for Research in Public Health and Community Care, University of Hertfordshire, UK
- d.trivedi{at}herts.ac.uk
The last thing my family had expected to find out and when my mother came to spend Christmas with us was that I had cancer of the lower oesophagus. We were especially in shock and disbelief because only six months previously my twin brother had died of advanced stomach cancer. It felt like lightning had struck twice, and I was taken back to the journey with my brother a few months earlier, which made me fearful of going through the same procedures as him and enduring the same pain. I worried that his fate would be also mine. Knowing what might be to come was hard to deal with emotionally, but having this knowledge allowed me to focus on the things I …