I have heard it many times from well-meaning people who feel it is the physician's duty to level with the patient . . . Good thoughts, friendship, advice, encouragement, hope, love, energy, smiles, are all gratefully accepted. Please leave pessimism, downers, bitterness, pity and negative preachiness at the door, without, of course, being dishonest. Norman Cousins, author of Anatomy of an Illness , The Healthy Heart, and The Biology of Hope spent the last fourteen years of his life researching these issues at the UCLA School of Medicine. A few months before his death in 1990, I was fortunate to arrange for Cousins to speak at the Unitarian Universalist church I was serving in Evanston, Illinois.
Illness is a terrifying experience.
Something is happening that people don't know how to deal with. They are reaching out not just for medical help but for ways of thinking about catastrophic illness. . . . Reassurance is not a Pollyanna concoction aimed at deception. It is not a verbal tranquilizer for creating a mood of synthetic calm. It is a way of putting the human spirit to work . . .