How do you explain about the disease to patients?
It is not difficult for medical specialists to diagnose the disease. However, they tend to agonize over how they should explain it to the patients and their families. Some doctors prefer not to tell the patients that there is no chance of them getting better. Instead, they encourage their patients with words like, "Don't worry, you will be cured." However, they know that the patient's condition will gradually get worse, and it's impossible for them to recover. They may explain this to the patient's family to a certain degree. Other doctors give up in despair and all they do is tell the patients and thair families that it's a very serious disease for which there is no cure.
What I say to patients is this: "It is very difficult to cure this disease. There is also the possibility it will slowly get worse. However, today various types of remedy are being developed." Then I explain in detail how many more years the patient will probably be able to walk, and how long they will be able to sit and move their hands and legs.
Patients and their families tend to be temporarily shocked by the news. But they soon recover their normal spirit and start planning their new life and how to spend their social life while coping with the disease. Some patients, however, visit various hospitals hoping to get more reassuring words about a cure. They never come back to me as outpatients. That discourages me, because I start worrying I couldn't make myself understood properly. I have to conclude that to begin with we didn't have a good rapport.
I guess those patients and their families who stay with me have thoughts similar to mine as their doctor. Little Aya Kito (referring to a grown woman like this may sound strange, but to me she is still 'Little Aya') and her mother were among them.
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