{"id":4074,"date":"2019-12-22T21:01:13","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T19:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/?p=4074"},"modified":"2019-12-22T21:01:15","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T19:01:15","slug":"good-news-bad-news-or-no-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/2019\/12\/good-news-bad-news-or-no-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news, bad news or no news?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Are you a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good news first\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad news first\u00e2\u20ac\u009d type of person? Or maybe you prefer no news at all? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where I found myself following my second bone marrow biopsy in as many months: avoiding contacting my doctor in case the results were not what I wanted to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a very different kind of response for me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was all over my first biopsy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the initial one from two years ago, when I was first diagnosed with chronic cancer. I was equally on top of the pathology results from my biopsy in September, which confirmed what the PET CT had shown: that this was not a benign growth (the best though least likely scenario) but a return of my lymphoma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went under the needle one more time to check my bone marrow. Good news: no cancer there. But there was still something off that didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make sense to my doctor; she ordered a second biopsy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those were the results I was waiting for now. I should have heard after about 10 days. But I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t and, remarkably, I seemed to be happier that way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avoiding news like this goes against how philosophers and scientists have long understood the way human beings process information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that individuals seek \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or at least pay attention to \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sources of information is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deeply embedded in Western culture<\/a>, at least as far back as Aristotle’s statement that \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcall men, by nature, desire to know,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes library and information science professor Donald O. Case in a 2005 paper published in the\u00c2\u00a0Journal of the Medical Library Association<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, as psychologist Abraham Maslow (famous for his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hierarchy of needs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) noted in 1963, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we can seek knowledge in order to reduce anxiety and we can also avoid knowing in order to reduce anxiety.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herbert Hyman and Paul Sheatsley have described the latter<\/a> as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153selective exposure.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where human beings so desire cognitive consistency that they will avoid reading or hearing about information that conflicts with their internal states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, of course, aptly describes our modern media environment. In my case, though, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more that I desperately want to believe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still healthy, that I won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t need more treatment at some point in the future, that this will all somehow just \u00e2\u20ac\u0153go away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Avoiding any news that might contradict that perception serves me in its own perverse way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d therapist and journalist Lori Gottlieb points out<\/a> in her best-selling book\u00c2\u00a0Maybe You Should Talk to Someone<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People also opt out of information-gathering when they feel powerless, adds Israeli-born sociologist Elihu Katz. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make a lot of sense to delve deep into things over which one has no control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It gets even trickier when it comes to cancers like mine that wax and wane but always return, and where there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no clear line<\/a> between \u00e2\u20ac\u0153remission\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153relapse.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, some doctors have stopped using those terms. The cancer is always there; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just that, for certain periods, the chemo pulverizes it so that the scans can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find any tumors and your status becomes NED (short for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no evidence of disease\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this respect, I never really relapsed. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just gone \u00e2\u20ac\u0153non-NED\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for a while and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll probably do it again another few times over the course of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, could living in denial actually be an effective strategy for contending with chronic cancer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not really. Science seems to support the opposite: embracing bad news rather than resisting it. Researchers from the University of Toronto and UC Berkeley have dubbed this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153habitual acceptance<\/a>\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and they write that it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153helps keep individuals from reacting to \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and thus exacerbating \u00e2\u20ac\u201c their negative mental experiences.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Moshe Shay Ben-Haim at Tel Aviv University has proposed<\/a> a technique involving repeated exposure to a negative event in order to assist people grappling with bad news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We show that, counterintuitively, you can avoid getting into a bad mood in the first place by dwelling on a negative event,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ben-Haim writes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you look at the newspaper before you go to work and see a headline about a bombing or tragedy of some kind, it’s better to read the article all the way through and repeatedly expose yourself to the negative information. You will be freer to go on with your day in a better mood.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will finding out my bone marrow biopsy results allow me to be happier in the long run? Or will it plunge me into even more uncertainty over which I remain powerless? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uncertainty \u00e2\u20ac\u0153doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean the loss of hope \u00e2\u20ac\u201c it means there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possibility,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d writes Gottlieb in her book. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what will happen next \u00e2\u20ac\u201c how potentially exciting. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to have to figure out how to make the most of the life I have, illness or not.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a full month had passed with no news from my doctor, I finally mustered up the courage to welcome uncertainty and embrace any bad news. I fired off a WhatsApp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My doctor replied quickly. The second bone marrow sample looked better than the first, she wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153with more functioning blood cells than were seen initially\u00e2\u20ac\u009d although the percentage was still much lower than normal. Then again, I have cancer, I reminded myself, so what did I expect?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t comment on how I hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been in touch, nor did I ask my doctor why she hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t updated me as soon as she received the results. Maybe she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a no news sort of person, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not so sure I am anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first wrote about how I deal with good and bad news at <\/em>The Jerusalem Post<\/em><\/a>. Image from Damian Gadal – She’s bad news, <\/em>CC BY 2.0<\/em><\/a>
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\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Avoidance is a simple way of coping by not having to cope.” The science behind why we avoid bad news and whether that’s a good coping strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[122,117],"tags":[123,229,230,228,124,232,231],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4074"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4078,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4074\/revisions\/4078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisnormallife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}