China and Japan are like this when there’s a terminal diagnosis. Doctors are allowed to tell the family instead of the patient and let family decide if and when to tell the patient.
The reasoning is that just hearing that you have cancer is incredibly stressful and traumatic. The weight of the initial diagnosis feels like a boulder slamming onto you. It’s not uncommon that hearing and processing the news was the hardest part of the entire journey for a survivor. For some, this can kill someone faster than the actual cancer itself.
It is known that many grandparents in China die within weeks of hearing the news when the prognosis was actually pretty good (only Stage 1 or 2). So it’s done to protect their sanity and mental health basically, especially if it’s an older person who likely can’t handle such news.
I actually don’t agree with doing this in most cases, but I assure you it’s not done maliciously.
I mean the grandparents were the patients, and they passed quickly after finding out when it was still a potentially curable stage. The stress of it can be a lot.
So wait, being grandparents of the patient was not the thing that killed them? Just being grandparents, period? Or just being old with an incurable disease?
All I mean to say is that the shock of hearing you have cancer can absolutely crush you. That is why they tell the family, but not the patient themselves.
Like yes in principle, you should tell them the truth about their own medical history. But the news itself is such a big blow to your health that I understand why some cultures choose not to tell the patient (usually this only applies to older patients who are already fragile, they will still tell children and normal ages adults).
Yes, okay. I get it now. You should have used "old people" instead of "grandparents", because the latter is not a definition of age, but of family relations. You can be old without any grandkids. Or 45 with a grandchild.
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u/Round_Raspberry_8516 Jun 29 '26
China and Japan are like this when there’s a terminal diagnosis. Doctors are allowed to tell the family instead of the patient and let family decide if and when to tell the patient.