rosie, i'm truely sorry about the loss of your daughter. in fact i totally agree with you. just to clarify: i'm not saying that the symptoms should not be taken seriously and looked into. quite the opposite. in my view, my sister is, as most other patients in most other cases, the best judge of her own conditions. she knows what's happening in her body before anybody else does. i've ranted before about the doctors not taking seriously my sister's symptoms when a new tumour started showing up. they thought it could just be a simple infection and it took them over a month to do the tests that showed that the growth was in fact cancerous. in the process, they might have in fact hurt her survival chances as during this time the tumour grew quite rapidly. here too, they made a subjective judgement that was erroneous.

so let me ammend my point: so much, physiologically and psychologically, rides on the medical professionals' judgements, and they should not make judgements without proper examination and investigation. telling my sister that chemo wasn't working before they actually had any evidence put her and all of us in psychological crisis, while dismissing early symptoms of the new tumour increased the physiological risk. in both cases what was missing was actual investigation (which finally only happened upon our insistance and pressure) and, may i add, respect for my sister. if the relationship between doctor and patient was more oriented towards the patient, things would be so different.

good thoughts, healing and peace.

gita