No military expert would claim that it is only the officers who need training. And yet, in medicine, physicians often assume that only the medical team that sends patients into the battlefield of treatment needs training. Physicians often assume that the patient needs to know nothing except how to follow medical advice. In recent years, this assumption has begun to change for medical treatment in general. For example, patients are now encouraged to get more than one opinion about their treatment.
Laws now require that patients be given extensive information about treatment options and effects.
Particularly in cancer, the discussion of treatment options has reached the point where some patients feel that, rather than being given too few choices, they face too many. The central problem, in brief, is that we have not yet recognized the need for systematic education and training for cancer patients when facing the tremendous and traumatic changes that occur after a diagnosis of cancer. But it does not say that you should automatically trust my maps. Rather, it is a book that illustrates some of the rudiments of the process of mapmaking in charting the course you will want to set for yourself. I wish I could tell you that the maps of informed choice in cancer treatment and life with cancer were simple and straightforward.