Dear Judy,
My wife reads you online faithfully, and she told me to write you, but I don’t really think you can answer this. My younger sister (she’s 35) has recurrent breast cancer — twice so far — and this time it seems to have spread, according to her doctors. She won’t tell me where it’s spread to. I fear the worst.
My sister isn’t under hospice care but she’s checking out the ones in her area. Last night she mentioned to me that she has a pretty good idea of when she’s going to die, which I think is impossible. I think maybe her illness and fear are affecting her mind, and I’m worried.
Do you think she should see a therapist as well? Should I mention it to her? My wife tells me to mind my own business, to listen to her, but not advise. I don’t think I can do that.
Phil
Dear Phil,
I really sorry about your sister. She is a young woman and what she’s going through is very frightening. Like you, I have no idea if she’s in danger of dying soon. Perhaps she doesn’t either.
On the other hand — and I’m just asking you to consider this — perhaps your sister does have an idea that her time may be near an end. Sandeep Jauhar, a Long Island cardiologist and author of “Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation,” has written “It amazes and baffles me when patients have a sixth sense about their own deaths.
“Last year my time cared for a woman who told us calmly on morning rounds that she had a feeling she was going to die that day.”
The woman was right, Dr. Jauhar recalls. Of course that patient apparently only was aware of her impending death a few hours before it occurred. Your sister says she is seeing into a slightly more distant future, evidently.
Like Jauhar, however, I don’t necessarily discount intuition. In 2007 the New England Journal of Medicine had a story about a cat named Oscar who knew in advance when nursing home patients were about to die — and curled up beside them in anticipation of the event.
What can you do? Call your sister regularly, visit her, take her out to movies, restaurants, help her with daily life.
And your wife is right: listen to her.
And thank you for writing
Judy
Phil’s sister, like the cat Oscar and like me, is one of those creatures who are in touch with the universe and the messages it sends them about life and death. Sometimes the knowledge this brings is too painful to bear. At other times it can be used for incredible healing.
Well well well! Instead of an advice column on death and dying, you have become a platform for self-promoting fortune tellers and other nonsense!
I don’t know about fortune tellers, and really if there are any out there, I only need six little numbers. In no particular order….
I have been in this field long enough to take heed if a patient mentions anything that hints at their “knowing” of their time left. They say it in many different ways. But I always listen, they know way before we do. .It is up to us to take advantage of that window of opportunity to help them get their wishes and tasks completed.
Jeanne, like you I’ve learned to respect the feeling certain patients get when they feel their time here is up. I take those kinds of intuitions very seriously.
thanks for your incisive comments –