Article content

The single parent had been in hospital for months, suffering from terminal cancer but refusing to accept that death was near.

Even the person’s two young children were unaware of the dire prognosis, recalls Naomi Kogan, a social worker at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital who cared for the patient. Finally, last month, a teenage daughter arrived at the hospital to learn that her only parent would not be coming home — minutes before the person died.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Death and denial on the cancer ward: Refusing to accept reality can be shattering to family, study finds Back to video

“The impact has been devastating, to have only an hour to say goodbye,” said the social worker. “The child is having major difficulties.”

[np-related /]

Yet such entrenched denial of terminal disease is a surprisingly common occurrence on the cancer ward, said Ms. Kogan, and a new study she and colleagues have just published suggests it can have a shattering impact on the family members who care for those patients.

Relatives struggling to play along with the alternate reality sometimes have to turn a blind eye as the patient pretends to ignore dangerous symptoms, and are unable to share their own emotional turmoil over the illness, the researchers found. Sometimes, children are left completely in the dark.