When a woman is facing a grim, should her husband make the decisions for her?
When the news is bleak, it is all the more important for the patient to be in charge. She shouldn’t undergo treatments for the sake of her loved ones. She should do what is right for her, based on the recommendations of her doctors and her own preferences. That’s easy to say, hard to carry out. When Carol Shields, the Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist, was facing advanced breast cancer, she tried to live by the rule that the decisions were hers, not her husband’s or her family’s. But sometimes, she admitted, she underwent an experimental treatment for the sake of the family. And when a woman knows that the end is near, no one has the right to make her feel guilty. Dave Quemere told me how his wife faced her death instead of signing on for one more experimental drug that probably wouldn’t have worked for her. Her family thought she was giving up. He thought the decision was the bravest he’d ever seen.
