AITA for telling a hospice patient the truth about his prognosis after his daughter begged me not to?
I have been a hospice volunteer for six years now, though I spent thirty years before that as an ICU nurse, so I know how to sit with hard truths. Last month I was assigned to Earl (81M), a retired mechanic with pancreatic cancer who had maybe three weeks left. His daughter Denise (52F) pulled me aside on my very first visit and asked me, please, never to tell her father how bad things really were. She said he was a fighter and that knowing would take that away from him. For two weeks I just held his hand and listened to him talk about his old fishing boat. But last Tuesday he grabbed my wrist and asked me straight out, am I dying soon, Peggy, and don't you lie to me like everybody else. I could not do it. I have watched too many people leave this world angry because nobody let them finish their goodbyes. There is a time to keep silence and a time to speak, and I felt that time had come. So I told him gently that yes, his body was shutting down, and that there was still time to say what needed saying. He cried, but he thanked me, and he called his estranged son that same night. Denise found out and was furious, said I went behind her back and broke a promise that was never mine to make. She complained to my hospice supervisor. Now she will not look at me when she visits, and the other volunteers are split down the middle on whether I should have kept my mouth shut.
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