anamnesiac

landed on seventh heaven while channel surfing just at the point where the minister was speaking with the head of a hospital. he had just spoken to a patient who had been told he had 6 weeks to live. the doctor said something like, we are only interested in the truth, and the minister said, well i am happy to hear that, because the truth is, nobody really knows when they are going to die. he talked about how when the doctors give a specific prognosis like that, since they are perceived as the authority, the patient takes them literally. the doctor said, you can’t believe that if we tell this patient he is going to die in six weeks give or take a day that he will accommodate us just because we said that. the minister replied that this was exactly what he was getting at. the doctor said he just did not believe that. and the minister ended by saying that he could see that, and it made him sad because it made his job that much harder.

i, meanwhile, was sobbing. not just because i am getting my period and leaving a job that has been my whole life for four years, but because i know that if the doctor told my father that he had six weeks to live, my father would die six weeks TO THE HOUR later. and that is just the pathetic state of things – and not just with my father.