She Thanked Me for Life, But I Saw Death Coming — The Day a Mother’s Eyes Broke Me

Lying on its own isn't an acceptable thing to do. It's immoral and insincere to look someone in the eyes and open your mouth only to feed him or her lies about a particular thing. It even shows disrespect because someone who respects another doesn't lie to them.

On the contrary, could there ever be a time when lying becomes beneficial? Maybe out of pity of what is coming, you choose to lie to someone just to keep them in the dark for a while because the truth remains that you can't keep lying forever. Just like the literal igbo adage says, "you can't hide the truth under the sun" meaning that one day, the truth will definitely come. And when it does, how will it be seen? As deceit? Or as a shield; as you trying to shield the person's mental and emotional state until they were ready?

As a medical doctor, there's no doubt that honesty is the bedrock of our practice, but I won't lie to you, being truthful often comes with a heavy burden.

When someone comes with an end stage disease, we theoretically and scientifically know the person is going to die but yet we keep ordering investigation tests just for palliative care because we can't outrightly tell the relatives their loved one is dying and when they ask, we keep saying, "we are trying our best", "we will see what we can do" and maybe when the person makes a slight improvement that, in the grand scheme of things, means very little, we say, "we were better today than we were yesterday"

We keep loading the patient with analgesics and painkillers just to subdue the pain the person is going through until he or she gives up because how could you look someone in the eyes and say to him, "Your loved one will die, it's just a matter of days"
Do you know the psychological and emotional stamina someone would need to withstand such a blow? It's not as easy as it sounds.

So What Do We Then Do?

Answering from my profession perspective, The fact that you're trying to shield the relatives emotions doesn't still make us lie, however, we play around with words.

None of those responses I mentioned earlier give concrete information. They're neither here nor there but it's better than giving you false hopes or lying to you that your loved ones will live whereas the person will die in few days.

My Personal Experience

Just two months ago, when I was in Paediatrics, we had a 14-year-old girl who had undergone nephrectomy two years earlier due to nephroblastoma but came back that two months ago and the chest x-ray revealed secondary metastasis to about 80% of both lungs.

Seeing the chest x-ray result, I already knew it was just matter of days because the child already had respiratory difficulties and embarrassments and was saturating around 80-86% in 2L/Min of oxygen.

Two days into her admission, while I was on night duty and was called around 4am that the patient was desaturating to as low as 40% (what these means were that the body cells weren't getting enough oxygen and once they don't get enough oxygen, they will die out just in matter of time.)

I didn't know what to do except increasing the Oxygen to maybe 5L/Min. I called my consultant, updated him on the patient's current condition and he agreed to my plan.

I increased the oxygen and the child's saturation was back at 86% which isn't even so ideal because the expected is from 94% to 100%.

Her mother was so relieved and happy the child was better and was thanking me immensely, I couldn't say "you're welcome" to any of the "thank yous" she rained on me because I knew that the child won't survive it for the next 24hours.

The mum was so so happy and kept on thanking God for saving her life and tears nearly rolled out my eyes that I had to leave the scene.

At exactly 4 p.m that day, the girl died.

The mum was shattered telling me to come and do what I did before so she could live but what more can I do?

In summary, I don't think lying will ever be justified but also, Some times, it's just a moral choice made with compassion, it's all a matter of what the intention was, or, you could still chose to play around with words rather than lying.

All Pictures Are Mine

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day ahead 👍

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