A suffering person often wants to communicate how awful a fatal illness is.
Words are often irrelevant.
The empathic effort takes its toll most often by the insights patients give us about ourselves. Their needs and vulnerabilities bring us face to face with our own. A care giver's own helplessness and despair may endanger the patient by causing neglect or avoidance of the patient, or a harboring of the feeling that the patient would be better off dead. This conveys how burdensome the patient is to his care givers, which could be devastating to the patient who looks to a doctor or nurse for some sense of hope. Fortunately, most patients feel that they are acceptable to their care givers no matter how scared, miserable, or disfigured they are and find resources within themselves to make what they can of each day.