MovieChat Forums > Brian's Song (1971) Discussion > Team owner, roommate and wife told befor...

Team owner, roommate and wife told before the patien?

posted 10 years ago by MdmBadenov
5 replies | jump to latest

Wow, those were the days. No HIPPA laws then! Brian Piccolo has life-threatening disease and even has to have surgery ready scheduled (for the next day), yet he's the last one to know. I don't know if that was done for the movie to add to the melodrama or if that's how it really happened. If the latter, I can sort of believe it. I know in the past, it wasn't uncommon for doctors of terminally ill patients to break the news to the immediate family first and let them decide who should tell the patient, when, and if at all. With an NFL player, it's almost like the team owners own the players too....as though the players were the personal property of the team owners, so naturally they would be informed first about anything pertaining to the player. When the coach or manager asked Halas who was going to tell Pic, I thought, "How about the doctor??" Not only did Pic's roommate have to break the news to him that he had lung cancer but also that the cancer spread (what I assume they meant when they said the doctors "found more of the tumor". Would you like it if you had to get news like that from your teammate?

[–] almostfm-1 9 years ago

Remember, this is going on to 45 years ago. While it wasn't as common as it had been in the past (King George VI was _never_ told he had lung cancer), there were still doctors who felt that giving the patient such bad news might make him or her give up.

I wasn't there, of course, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it wasn't basically true.

[–] [email protected] (1640) 3 years ago

I can understand that actually. My father and mother being given the diagnosis of cancer made them give up almost immediately. My father for example stopped all his meds and cried all the time. There was not an ounce of fighting spirit in him and he lashed out at everyone who cared for him. There are people like that, they're just not fighters. So its understandable imo. Maybe if he didnt know and it was downplayed, he would still be alive today.

[–] Boromir (9712) 3 years ago

It's sad story Vicky, I am sorry about your dad.

Viktor Frankl once said:

"The prisoner who had lost his faith in the future — his future — was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."

It's true for all of us, especially cancer, it's like 'Inherent Prison'. But I guess sometimes you don't have any choice and must tell the bad news, you don't really can avoid these. I think it's important to match the message to the person and try to leave him a glimmer of hope. The problem you never really know how anyone will react to such a bad news, sometimes the one we the least suspect surprise us for better or worse.

[–] [email protected] (1640) 3 years ago

It's ok. I read something on Quora before about an experiment done on mice. They were put in a tank to swim & all sank & drowned within 6 minutes. They did another, but this time just before the mice were about to drown, the scientists took them out, dried them for a few minutes, then after put them back into the tank to swim. All of the mice swam for about 60hrs because they had hope that they would be rescued. Resilience is very dependent on hope. You lose hope, you give up.

[–] quinnum 9 years ago

First, it's "HIPAA".

And yes, it was for "dramatic effect". In actuality, Piccolo knew, from feeling them, that there were more tumors and actually tried to keep it from Joy