Breaking bad news

Chrissie Giles in mosaic:

“She kept saying to me, ‘It’s going to be fine, isn’t it?’ And I’m saying, ‘We’ll do everything we can, let’s just do a few tests and figure out what’s going on.’ At that stage in my mind, I knew it was bad, but I still had to figure out exactly what flavour of bad it was.”

The woman was anxious to be home on New Year’s Eve to make a call to family overseas. But blood tests confirmed that she’d need to stay.

“She said to me, ‘Tell me the worst-case scenario.’ I looked at her. She looked at me. And in my mind I was thinking, ‘She’s not ready for this diagnosis.’ Then her relative stepped in and she said, ‘No, no, she means what’s the worst-case scenario in terms of how long does she have to stay in hospital?’

“At that moment, you realise that we all know exactly what we’re talking about, but we’re all accepting it to different degrees.”

Read the full piece here.