“I need you to do everything for him,” the young man told me through an Arabic interpreter.

We were at an impasse. We had many tools available to treat our patient’s pain and ease his suffering. But the young man wanted something more — a cure for his father, my patient. I backed away from the marble-topped table and left the bright, well-appointed family meeting room on the hospital’s top floor. Heading to see my other patients, I worried about what the next few days would hold for my patient.

He was a middle-aged man from a large city in Saudi Arabia. Over the course of a few months, his belly became swollen and painful. He lost weight and his skin turned a vibrant shade of yellow. He was eventually given a discouraging diagnosis: widely metastatic cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the gallbladder. It is an incurable disease with an average survival of only months.

He was dissatisfied with his care at home and decided to come to my hospital in Manhattan for treatment, accompanied by his youngest son.

After stepping off the plane, my patient’s first stop was an appointment with an oncologist. He could barely walk, and the oncologist immediately admitted him to the hospital. There the doctors had grim news. “We can’t cure you and your time is short,” they told him. “We think you should go home to be with your family.”