In this podcast What You Don't Know by Lulu Wang, she talks about a time when she had to make a difficult life decision. That decision was whether to go against her family’s cultural beliefs and tell her grandmother (NaiNai) that she was dying of stage four lung cancer or respect their wishes by not telling her. NaiNai's family kept her ignorant of her own expected death. But was that the wrong decision morally or what kept her alive? In Lulu family's cultural it is customary for doctors to give bad news to the family members rather than directly telling the patient. In this case it gives the family the control of whether or not to tell the patient. After hearing the news that NaiNai was dying from stage 4 lung cancer and has three months to live, the family made the decision not to tell her.
Before hearing Wang's full story I instantly disagreed with the Wang family's decision. I felt just like what Lulu had stated to her mother - "I'm pretty sure a lot of other Americans would feel the way that I felt, that somebody's going to die. It's their right to know." Yet the more I listened the more I could understand the decision not to tell. The Chinese cultural believe that mental and emotional health are completely linked to physical health. In the United States the battle is just as hard with medication. Medication will fight a disease, but destroy the body in the process. We let this happen because we focus more on the medication than mental wellbeing. One notices in the podcast that NaiNai is joyful throughout the months where she was said to have been dying. She was given no medicine in three years after the diagnosis and her loved ones believed that it was because they had not told her. I agree with both sides. Someone who is diagnosed with a deadly disease needs to be treated with honesty, but also joy instead of deceit. Sometimes you have to tell someone close a difficult truth that they know yet have been pushing away. My boyfriend of three years has been struggling with ongoing mental health. He's coped with it in healthy ways and unhealthy ways. One night had been far worse than others. I came home to him completely blacked-out drunk, in rare form. Instead of the night I expected, I had to stay by his side all night on a roller-coaster of emotions. The next day he had no recollection of any of any of the terrible things he had said about himself. It was then my duty to tell him the truths he said out loud the night before and that he needed to become more serious about his mental health. That's a night I will never forget. Sometimes unsettling truths are drawn out through bad methods. But ultimately, if someone is there to help without judgment it can be healed.
1 Comment
Ashley Coley
10/21/2017 08:33:02 pm
At first I also disagreed with their decision but as the story progressed I started to look at it from the families perspective of not wanting to take her happiness away
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