A patient comes in today. Middle-aged man, slightly balding. He had headaches that just wouldn't go away. So we got a MRI of his brain. The official report hadn't come in yet, but the images were on the computer. So I glanced through them.
MRI is an amazing thing. With the click of my mouse, I can fly through cross sections of a person's brain, seeing it in exquisite detail. I can see, millimeter by millimeter, what makes you who you are.
As I flew through the cross sections, I started to see bright spots at the junction of the gray and white matter. There were ar least four to my untrained eye. I called over the resident (a junior doctor). He agreed. Lesions at the gray-white interface are pathognomonic for metastatic cancer. The patient's prognosis was dismal.
The resident and I went into the patient's room to tell him the news. His wife was there.
"The results of the MRI are not good," the resident told him. "We think you have cancer in your brain. The prognosis is not good."
He looked at us for a while, not showing much emotion. I tried to picture myself in his position, but couldn't. I had no idea what I would do or say or think.
He said, "Jesus will heal me!" "I'll be fine, 'cause Jesus will heal me!"
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
-Mark Twain
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