A Diagnosis Is Not a Destiny. Neither Is Conventional Wisdom

Nearly every day in my practice, a patient sits across from me and hears words no one wants to hear. Cancer. Heart failure. A diagnosis with a long name and a short prognosis. The first thing I tell them matters most: You are not your diagnosis. You are a person who happens to have an illness. Then we go to work - every option weighed, every rock turned over. Some of my bravest patients fought all the way into hospice, still smiling, still refusing to surrender their lives to a statistic.