My latest piece for TIME.com is Not Discussing Down Syndrome Complications Is Unethical.
There’s definitely a wrong way to give an unexpected medical diagnosis.
In 2000 I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor, a meningioma. I knew that the tumor would need to be removed, but I was shocked when the ophthalmologist declared: “I’m so glad that I’m not the neurosurgeon who’s going to operate. It’ll be tough; that sucker is sitting in the middle of your brain in a lake of blood.”
But while it’s easy to determine the wrong way for a doctor to give unexpected bad news, it’s surprisingly difficult to figure out the right way to give a specific diagnosis to a specific person. That’s what I thought when I read the account of the mother who was angry at her doctor for the way he handled her baby’s diagnosis of Down Syndrome.
Read more here.
