Letter to a Patient's Doctor

As a journalist who has written about the care of the dying (Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Line. Little, Brown; 1997), I recently received a letter from a reader, Mr. Richard J. Arthur, whose wife had just died of breast cancer. After some discussion, Mr. Arthur sent me a copy of the following letter, which he had mailed to the physician who had cared for his wife.

Dear Doctor:

First of all, let me state that this letter is being written with love and respect, not as a complaint or anything remotely close to an accusation …

Let me go at it this way.

When you met with Donna and me last March to review the results of the latest bone scan, it was quite obvious that the radiation treatments had failed and that there would be no further medical treatment of the cancer in her spine. But you stood your distance as you talked. And, in fact, you rather shortly dismissed us from the consultation. You will be interested to know that as we left your office, Donna's comment to me was that it was harder for you to talk about the test results than it was for us to hear them.

Doctor, a lot of counseling would have been in order right then and …