The Sickness Read Online Free PDF

approach. Andrés nods, as if he hadn’t heard him, as if it were merely a mechanical, involuntary movement made while his mind is elsewhere. Perhaps he’s listening to his memory, watching all the sick people he’s treated and their families parade past; seeing all
those who were going to die and for whom there was no hope. Perhaps he’s remembering how he put into practice his theory of transparency. Some people even found him hard and inhuman. Others thanked him. Andrés always preferred to share the clinical truth with the objects of that truth, with those weary bodies, transformed into medical material, the recipients of needles and chemicals. It had often fallen to him to say: “I’m sorry, there’s no hope. There’s not even any point trying somewhere else, going to Los Angeles or Houston. You have, at most, two months to live.”
    He has always insisted that it’s best to be completely open with a patient. Even at the risk of inoculating him or her with a fear as terrible as the sickness itself. The likelihood is that the patient already suspects it, senses it, is secretly listening to the warnings coming from his or her own body, to the final note sounded by the sickness.
    â€œWe all have the right to know that our life has an end date, a deadline; we all have a right to know when and how we will die, that’s what I’ve always said.”
    â€œBut now it’s your father who’s on the other end of the stethoscope. It’s absurd, Andrés, think about it. You and I know how fast a cancer like this spreads.”
    â€œAnd he’s never even smoked, damn it!” mutters Andrés. “Not a single bloody cigarette in all his life!” he exclaims, pressing his lips together, as if he had bitten on an ice cube.
    â€œThat’s what I mean. Don’t you think he’s going to say precisely the same thing and ask the same question? What point is there in him knowing the truth?”

    â€œI can’t deceive him now. It wouldn’t be right.”
    â€œI’m sorry, but that’s total bullshit.”
    â€œNo, it’s not. It’s part of our history, part of what we’ve been through together, as father and son.”
    â€œThe big question is: can you do it?” While he speaks, Miguel fidgets on his chair, leans forward, gives a certain confidential tone to his words. “I mean, it’s easier to say such things to a patient, to someone who isn’t a member of your family. It’s upsetting, but it’s not the same; it’s different having your father there before you, and having to say to him: ‘Dad, you’ve only got a few more weeks to live.’ That’s what I mean. Can you do that?”
    â€œNo, I can’t.”
    Miguel nods, picks up his glass and takes another thoughtful sip before glancing first at his watch and then back at Andrés.
    â€œLet me tell you about a case we had in the department recently,” he says at last.
    Miguel is a nephrologist and, as well as having a private practice, he has worked for years as the director of a dialysis unit in a state-run hospital.
    â€œThere’s this one patient, he’s sixty-eight, a grumpy old thing called Efraín. He’s a diabetic, at least that’s his main ailment. He’s in the final stages, his kidneys are pretty much buggered, and he’s nearly blind. He has a terrible time on the dialysis machine. He screams and cries. He drives the technicians and the nurses mad. He’s become very bitter and fed up with life. Worse still: living for him equals suffering. He has to come into the unit three times a week and follow a ghastly diet, he finds
walking very difficult and his life expectancy is reducing by the day, so you can imagine what his life is like. One afternoon, one of the nurses asked if she could speak to me alone. I was a bit puzzled by this at first, but we went into the office and sat