Letters To The Editor
Empathy between two cancer patients
An Australian doctor's column, published in the weekly medical supplement of a local English daily a few days ago, presented a moving experience of two of the doctor's terminal cancer patients who shared regular weekly outpatient chemotherapy appointments under her care. While waiting together in the doctor's reception room, the two became friendly and close. One day, one of them noticed that the other missed the appointment. When he went to the doctor, he asked about his friend. The doctor naturally hesitated to reply. He tearfully asked the doctor again, "Did he go peacefully?" It was a poignant moment for the doctor who in her professional tradition hesitated to discuss one patient's case with another. The patient tearfully repeated, “I was just hoping that he did not die in pain.”
This event must have lingered in the memory of the doctor too. Writing it out must have helped her too, through sharing the pathos of the event with the readers.
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