Stanford PD Community Blog

Last year, my mother, a few weeks before a milestone birthday, learned she needed major surgery. The circumstances were not life-threatening. She would not be in the hospital long. But the recovery would still be protracted and restrict her ability to care for my father, who has Parkinson’s.

No worries. Her three grown children, all of whom live in distant cities, snapped into action. We would fly in for the surgery, call in extra help, telephone a few of her friends and ask them to check in, drop off some food, otherwise be on call. We congratulated ourselves for a well-designed plan. There was only one problem.

My mother insisted we not tell a soul.

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We want to let you in on a secret.

As your oncologists, we’d like to treat you with two, or three, or four different chemotherapy drugs, each of which has distinct side effects, some of which can kill you.

Or, if we were cardiothoracic surgeons, we might tell you that we need to crack your chest open to repair your damaged heart valve, and for that to happen you’ll need to undergo anesthesia from which you may never wake up.

As doctors, our goal is to help you, of course, and to do no harm. But we may actually hurt you, irreversibly. Not that this happens frequently, but it might.

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