The Tragedy of False Hope

Jerry Adler's piece, No Way to Treat the Dying, in Newsweek touches on a sensitive topic: false hope. Adler shares the heartbreak of a widower whose wife died of metastatic cancer. After her oncologists told her they couldn't cure her disease, she underwent treatment by an alternative practitioner who offered her the hope of cure.

Hope is the belief that a desired outcome will happen. Hope prompts feelings of hopefulness,  a constellation of thoughts and sensations that can be calming in terrifying times and inspiring in the face of challenge. Hopefulness feels good.

The problem is that the strength of these positive feelings can trick you. Imagine you feel profoundly hopeful of pulling the ace of spaces out of a deck of cards.  If all the aces have been removed, your hopefulness is genuine. But your hope is false, since you are hoping for something impossible.

False hope may feel better in the short run, but it comes at a price: Any attention and energy directed toward false hope is unavailable for pursuing  goals that are within reach. The widower in the Newsweek piece is now suing the alternative practitioner who encouraged his wife to nourish false hope. Even if the widower is compensated for the $41,000 they shelled out for ineffective treatments, he'll always regret having sacrificed the opportunity for consolation and closure at the end of his wife's life.

Comments

[Debby Bruck]

It is very sad to hear stories of this kind where people have no where else to turn in their desperation for a cure. A true healer will not ask you to spend your life savings or more. They have only your highest good and healing in mind, not their personal greed. That should be a tip not to take that route. There are energetic healers who provide comfort and reduction of pain at a very reasonable cost for people at every economic level. Definitely get references and speak to others who have received treatments.

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Debby,
Your comments target three important concerns in any discussion of Healthy Survivorship, but especially in the context of disease with no known cure.
First, Healthy Survivors have to figure out what place "cure" has in their list of hopes. Healthy Survivors recognize when "cure" is not the best primary goal for now.
Second, you say true "healers" have the patients' welfare as their top priority. Clearly charlatans are not healers; charlatans seek profit by knowingly tricking patients into taking ineffective treatments. Healthy Survivors don't mistake charlatans' Oscar-worthy expressions of concern for them as genuine. More challenging for Healthy Survivors is determining when "healers" with the sincere desire to help patients are not the best "healers" to go to for primary treatment of a life-threatening condition like cancer or uncontrolled diabetes. Chapter 3 of Happiness in a Storm, entitled "Your Healers" is devoted to helping people determine which specific healers can best help for each specific problem (cancer, pain, anxiety).
http://wendyharpham.com/Pages/HIAS.htm
And I agree with your last point about the value of seeking out the services of qualified allied health professionals who can play vital roles in helping patients obtain comfort and pain control. Healthy Survivors discuss all their treatments and all their healers with their primary doctors.

[Jeanne]

Wendy, as an attorney who volunteers for our local Hospice, I have come to appreciate how important it is for families to have "the opportunity for consolation and closure at the end of life." I will forward your Blog article to our local Hospice as they may find your comments very helpful for volunteer training.

Many of the families with whom I work really have no need for a Will. Usually, if there is a surviving spouse, the little property that they own is titled jointly and will pass by law to the survivor.

Often, though, someone needs a Will in order to get closure. I've seen this from two different perspectives. Sometimes a parent, after accepting the inevitability of death, has a need to tell his or her children that their failure to visit and to provide care and comfort over the years is a reason why what little is owned is given to non-family caregivers.

Other times, a parent wants to tell children that he or she is very sorry about whatever it was that caused a rift between the parent and child. Sometimes a parent wants to make up for the damage that divorce has done to the parent-child relationship. I've seen a lot of emotional healing and a lot of gratefulness when I am able to work with these adult children and their parent to facilitate a reconciliation at end of life.

However, I can't do this until the patient lets go of false hope. It's only then that their acceptance makes them reach out for consolation and for closure.

Thank you for your Blog.

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Jeanne,
Thanks for highlighting the hope of healing that can occur through drawing up a Will at the end of life. By letting go of false hope, people nourish the hope of shaping a legacy that reflects their wishes regarding their estate.
As I've seen over and over, drawing up a Will in no way means you want to die or welcome death. Paradoxically, for many patients, the act of taking care of "what if" frees them to nourish the hope of recovery against the odds.
with hope, Wendy