January 5, 2011
I added a blog link today. It goes to my sister’s blog. She started it as she faced disturbing mammogram results this past fall. Disturbing? Well, what do we say in communicating about test results that lead to more tests and raise lots of questions about the meaning of what they find?
Isn’t this yet another reason why it is so hard to talk about our health? It raises the truth before us that life as we know it is a timebound condition. And so, rather than talk about it, we avoid talking about it.
In the midst of health care reform, conversations about the cost of end-of-life care and failure to make end-of-life decisions about when to terminate care emerged. And they reflected that all too often, we don’t have these conversations. All too often, the pat phrase is, ‘do all you can…’ And that is one way to avoid thinking about ‘what if… I only had a short time to live…’