Dr Defilippis Summary

Dr. Defilippis discusses how communicating with children is difficult when their parent is sick. She discusses how she is used to talking to adults when someone is dying, but when talking to a child, it’s complicating. You don’t want to discuss too much, because children not only are more sensitive to these topics, but they often do not understand what is being said. The mother she was treating had brain cancer, Stage 4, which even her daughter knew was the worst. Dr. Defilippis was shocked when her daughter knew exactly what to ask and how to ask it when it came to her mother. She knew at that point not to hide anything, and be straight forward. The patient’s daughter looked about fourteen, with a younger brother of ten. When the doctor approached
her, and saw how informed her daughter was, she knew that the information she gathered came straight from the internet. It was impossible for her to sugar coat her mother’s information, which in the end, Dr. Defilippis felt was much better.
Cancer is a touching subject for anyone to discuss. Personally, I have gone through many of these discussions. My first year of high school, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer. Much like her fourteen-year-old patient, I knew about cancer from the internet. It almost seemed like something unreal. My grandmother died three days after she was diagnosed, so I never really had the time to completely understand everything a cancer patient goes through. The doctor tried to discuss these things with me, except for how she was going to be okay, but the doctor looked at me as a child that knew nothing. I feel that any child that has a parent dying should be informed in depth of the procedures and treatments, as well as the severity of what is going on. A child should not be excluded just because of their age, because many children that deal with losing a parent are more mature.