Some Considerations on a Patient’s Sense of Immortality: Bringing a Human Dimension to the Process

Abstract

One of the most frequent, although widely understandable, reactions of people diagnosed with an incurable tumor is represented by incredulity, anger, and the denial of the impossibility of a defnitive cure. Often, a picture of intense anxiety quickly takes over, overlapping the ever-growing collective hysteria of modern society, the result of a complex cultural mechanism in which technocracy often prevails over thought, introspection, and, in a broader sense, humanism. In this health drama, all actors often complain of formal inaccuracies while paying little attention to substantive ones. We argue that a more human emphatic patient-family-doctor relationship training to consider the undeniable progress of medicine and the fragility of all of us.