Breaking Bad News
Paul Gross
Bad news is like a lump of red-hot coal that lands in your palm–and that you can’t let go of, no matter how badly you’d like to.
I was tossed the burning coal over twenty years ago, when I was thirty years old and fit as a fiddle. Or so I thought. I also happened to be a first-year medical student, having my head filled with facts large and small about the human body.
Then something started to go wrong.
The first inkling came when I had to excuse myself from a two-hour seminar because of a sudden urge to pee. No big deal…and yet something about its urgency bothered me. The next time the seminar met, I took the precaution of urinating beforehand.
It didn’t help. The same painless urgency interrupted the session once more. What was up?
Before long, I found myself using bathrooms a lot–in fact, more often than anyone I’d ever met. Within weeks, a one-hour class exceeded my endurance. So did the bus ride to school. And I certainly couldn’t make it through the night.
Then the thirst began. A raging, playground-in-the-summer thirst that had me running back and forth from my desk …