The unspoken weight of words: reflections on a Vietnamese patient’s final choices
When the patient arrived by ambulance, he was frail, elderly, and alone in a hospital that spoke a language he could not understand. He had been transferred from a neighboring hospital across state lines due to concerns of malnutrition and pain. The initial CT scans were alarming—multiple lung masses, highly concerning for metastatic cancer. Yet, despite the grim prognosis, there were still barriers to giving him a definitive diagnosis, and …
