Today, one of my small cell lung cancer patient, Chen, his family held a family meeting, three hours of discussion, their final conclusion is: refused chemotherapy, asked to be discharged! There are three reasons for this: firstly, they are worried that Chen, who is sensitive, will be affected if he learns of his condition; secondly, they don’t want Chen to undergo the pain of chemotherapy; and thirdly, they want to seek Chinese medicine treatment. In fact, I have long seen Chen’s family faltered on the treatment. He was basically diagnosed at the end of February, but did not immediately chemotherapy, came to the outpatient clinic to see the doctor was also relatively hesitant. Later, Chen was hospitalized but then had to be discharged, reflecting even more their determination to refuse chemotherapy. Small cell lung cancer is a rapidly progressive disease. At the time of diagnosis, Chen’s superior vena cava had already been invaded, and the life-threatening superior vena cava syndrome was about to appear, and this is a chemotherapy-sensitive tumor, and it is possible for patients to survive for a long period of time after chemotherapy, although the number of patients who survive for a long period of time is very few and far between, but after all, there is still a chance for such a thing! For these reasons, I had a deep conversation with Chen’s daughter. I explained to her about his current situation as well as the treatment plan, the possible efficacy and toxic side effects of the treatment, the prognosis, etc. Of course, I also pointed out very clearly that, for this disease, the efficacy of traditional Chinese medicine is definitely not as good as that of chemotherapy. Perhaps you may ask, maybe he wanted to change hospitals for treatment! In my opinion, the determination of Chen and his family to refuse chemotherapy should be resolute. It is said that some of his relatives persuaded him not to have chemotherapy because they had witnessed a friend’s heavy reaction to chemotherapy after stomach cancer surgery, so their family was afraid of chemotherapy. However, everyone has a different physique and the toxic side effects of chemotherapy vary from person to person. Perhaps Chen will have intolerable toxic side effects of chemotherapy, or even life-threatening ones, but this is after all an extreme event. If you don’t want to give up the treatment but refuse chemotherapy because of these reasons, especially for chemo-sensitive tumors, you shouldn’t. I explained the above situation to Chen’s daughter, who did not immediately go through the discharge procedure for Chen; she promised to go home and advise her father, and at noon she returned to the hospital and whispered to me with her head bowed, “Dr. Song, I’m sorry, but we have decided to be discharged after all.” I could only remain silent and went through the automatic discharge procedures for her. Often times, the overprotective nature of a patient’s family causes the patient to miss out on treatment, often resulting in the opposite of what was intended. I regret that I thought I was being kind to the person; I thought that if I gave the details, they would recognize me and listen to me. I know in my heart that as long as the patient refuses treatment, it is not appropriate for the doctor to explain too much to the patient. Sometimes a full explanation of the condition will instead be regarded as a kind of retention founded on financial benefits, not to mention that chemotherapy carries a certain degree of therapeutic risk, and once a retained patient develops a serious toxic side effect, the medical practitioner will have to be highly condemned. I could only complain silently in my heart that in medicine, doctors can’t be all right, but a proven treatment shouldn’t be questioned. They said goodbye to me before they left, and after some thought, I decided to fight a little longer, saying, “Since you’ve been hospitalized, don’t rush your discharge; you’d better think about it more carefully!” My daughter, who probably didn’t fully understand what I meant, said it wouldn’t be much trouble to get in and out of the hospital. Well, it was! In the view of many patients, in and out of the hospital there is no trouble, is nothing more than handing over a medical card, for some procedures, but many people do not know is that, in order to this procedure, the hospital has how many non-medical staff and medical staff to pay the labor. The patient was hospitalized for 1 day and discharged, spending less than$40. But in that 1 day, the doctor carefully studied the condition, wrote a medical record, formulated a treatment plan, gave medical advice, wrote labs and checklists, and the nurse wrote nursing records and did nursing work …… The point is that you did not receive the treatment you deserved. Of course, a doctor’s work cannot be measured in monetary terms. We would never retain you because of hospitalization, and we fully account for the benefits and risks of treatment in order to allow you to make a decision after thinking it through. In fact, not long ago, a small-cell lung cancer patient in the department only accepted conservative treatment and refused radiotherapy. Moreover, this patient had medical insurance, so there was no monetary problem in treating the disease, and his children were by no means ungrateful, and the doctor had also given them a hard time, but I guess they thought that chemotherapy was ineffective and sinful. At that time, I thought such patients were extremely rare. But now it seems that there are so many patients who lack common sense and misunderstand chemotherapy! I recall a few years ago, a 20-year-old girl came to the outpatient clinic and had to take a few days off just to get a diagnosis! But from the clinical judgment, the little girl got is surprisingly lymphoma, a few lymph nodes in the neck has been very large, she lost weight, pain, at that time, I persuaded her to do a pathological biopsy, maybe there is hope for a cure, she was afraid of the pain of surgery, I told her will be anesthesia, and the surgery is very traumatic, she said did not cut in your body, you do not know. I told her this disease is life threatening, she didn’t seem too convinced. I said let your parents come to see you, she said she was out of town and couldn’t come …… I …… Those patients who don’t accept treatment, you have deep misunderstandings about chemotherapy, you don’t take chemotherapy for a variety of reasons, you have unspeakable secrets that doctors can’t access. However, doctors still want to say to everyone, do not delay treatment because of concealment of the disease, do not look at chemotherapy as a ferocious beast, chemotherapy is actually not so terrible, chemotherapy is sometimes the efficacy of the treatment is really quite good ……