Doctor Helps Woman Stop Blaming Herself and Accept Treatment
Dr. Amitabh Ray shared a poignant experience at the ASCO 2026 annual meeting, highlighting the emotional struggles of a cancer patient who felt responsible for her family's tragedies. Through empathy and understanding, he helped her overcome her guilt and accept treatment. This story emphasizes the importance of addressing the emotional aspects of patient care in oncology.
- ▪Dr. Amitabh Ray recounted a patient's refusal of treatment due to overwhelming guilt after losing family members.
- ▪The patient believed she was responsible for her family's deaths and felt she deserved to die.
- ▪Ray shifted his approach from clinical arguments to empathetic listening, which ultimately helped the patient accept treatment.
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There are lessons that are not taught in medical school. Students and trainees learn how to classify tumors according to their stage, their histology, their margins, the number of lymph nodes they’ve colonized, and now, even by their genomic profiles.“But they don’t tell you what to do when a patient looks you in the eye and says: I deserve this cancer,” Amitabh Ray, MD, professor and radiation oncologist at the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute in India, said during an ASCO Voices session at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2026 annual meeting in Chicago.During the session, Ray told the story of why this patient initially refused treatment and how he convinced her that she was worthy of survival.“When we think about ASCO, we think about science, survival rates, and…
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