Dear Judy
I thought your advice to Ellie who wrote in yesterday saying her 19-year-old son, the result of an old clandestine sexual affair, was possibly in danger of dying — was awful.
No other way to put it.
First you told the mother to keep the secret a secret. Everyone knows secrets are toxic. Next you told her to tell a cardiologist so that doctor would now have to keep an ugly secret. And finally you told her to bring her son in for a heart test, without exactly telling him way.
All that stuff is poisonous. She should tell her family the truth, the sooner the better.
Rita
Dear Rita,
Secrets, especially bombshells, are always best left unexploded. I told Ellie to do everything possible to make safeguard her son’s health: tell a cardiologist about the problem, check out whether or not he does have the condition called “Long QT” which can lead to sudden death; make sure he doesn’t carry the gene.
It is entirely possible the son doesn’t have the gene. It is also possible that he does. But why add to such a complicated scenerio when long QT is a condition that can be controlled with beta blockers? And why make a family miserable years after a secret affair has ended?
Secrets, in my view, are sometimes the most important things to keep — to yourself.
Thank you for writing
Judy
