There’s a show on AMC that I’ve been addicted to called, Break­ing Bad. This show has won numer­ous awards—sixteen and count­ing so far. The main char­ac­ter, Wal­ter White, suf­fers from stage 3A non-​​small cell lung can­cer. Upon hear­ing the news, he “breaks bad” and morphs from a bril­liant high school chem­istry teacher to a pro­ducer of metham­phet­a­mine to secure his family’s finan­cial future in the event of his death.

The oncol­o­gist tells him that the prog­no­sis is poor, that even with the best treat­ment he would only be pro­long­ing the inevitable. As the doc­tor out­lines treat­ment modal­i­ties, Wal­ter sits there, by him­self, dazed. Only a per­sis­tent buzzing is heard dur­ing the inter­ac­tion; words and real­ity become blurred. You see him, as a hus­band and father, sit­ting there by him­self in what appears to be a stu­por and at best a state of utter bewil­der­ment and con­fu­sion. In the midst of it all, he becomes fix­ated on a mus­tard stain on the doctor’s lapel, and despite the hor­ri­ble news, pro­ceeds to point out the stain.

Watch­ing it makes you won­der if the words have actu­ally sunk in and if the recip­i­ent under­stood the impli­ca­tions of the news. It leads me to won­der how many of our patients are told news that can lit­er­ally turn their life upside down, when they are with­out sup­port and by them­selves? Is it really true that you have to walk a mile in someone’s shoes to under­stand their sit­u­a­tion, feel­ings, and plight? Or is it pos­si­ble to be empa­thetic with a per­son with­out hav­ing expe­ri­enced a can­cer diag­no­sis your­self? Would a poor prog­no­sis change the very char­ac­ter of a per­son and alter the rest of his or her life?

There isn’t very much or very accu­rate infor­ma­tion col­lected on the num­ber of patients who hear bad news when they are alone. But we all know they’re out there, even if there isn’t very much data col­lected. A health­care professional—a doc­tor, a nurse, anyone—could be think­ing about that din­ner wait­ing for them at home with their fam­ily or friends they have plans with after work. They might try to rush through their day and try to see the rest of their patients as quickly as possible.

How many of us for­get to take a moment out of our busy work day to sit down with a patient and their fam­ily and really ask how they’re feel­ing and how they’re cop­ing? They can be at any stage in their jour­ney. Typ­i­cally, I see patients in the midst of their dis­ease or at the end of their life. I con­fess that even I’ve been guilty a few times of ask­ing but not really ask­ing, “How are you feel­ing?” I think that we all have to keep in mind that it is not only the patients who suf­fers but their care­givers as well.

In Break­ing Bad, the news of Wal­ter pro­duc­ing metham­phet­a­mine ille­gally is more alarm­ing to his wife than the ter­ri­fy­ing can­cer diag­no­sis and puts even more strain on an already strained rela­tion­ship. So, the next time your patient is about to hear some bad news—a new diag­no­sis, news about metas­tases, or even that the kitchen has run out of that amaz­ing clam chowder—remind your­self that your words and actions may help pre­vent your patients from “break­ing bad” and improve their out­look on life.