How To Tell Family and Friends Distressing News About The Patient

Her heart stopped beating. She was revived and rushed to the Intensive Care Unit from our hospital room by way of a brief stop in the cardiac care unit. The prognosis was not optimistic.
I prepared for my overnight vigil by parking myself in the only unclaimed table and chair left in the waiting room. It was to be my sleeping quarters for the night.
After staring blankly at the TV screen on the far wall for the better part of an hour, trying to absorb the nightmarish events that had just transpired, I attempted to distract myself in an effort to reduce the emotional typhoon that had me tied up in knots. Up to that point, this had been the worst day of my life. Little did I know it was soon going to get a whole lot worse!
I love my profession and truly enjoy my job. For that reason alone, I opened my computer to check my emails with the hope it might divert my attention away from the chaos that was bombarding my personal life. For obvious reasons, I had not been in contact with my company the entire day. I was not concerned; however, as things were typically quiet on Fridays. I was hoping this pattern had continued, especially on this day.
If the shock of almost losing my wife hours before wasn’t enough anxiety during one lifetime, the first email I read, marked “urgent” ensured it would be the single-most horrifying day of my life.
Staring at me was a notification from my Senior Vice-President. It informed me, along with my peers, that our position was being eliminated within the month. Ten years of dedicated service with my company, and I was being informed in the most impersonal manner imaginable, a mass email that we would have but a few short weeks to seek other employment inside the company. If not successful, a layoff with an inadequate severance package would be inevitable.
How did I react? I actually started to laugh out loud! I couldn’t believe what I had just read in light of the day I had just had.
For one of the first times in my life, I felt completely and utterly alone. It was late at night. Most of the people in my time zone were likely asleep. I couldn’t talk to my wife. I didn’t want to share the information with my sons, my parents or anyone else.
It was then that legitimate questions began to surface:
Do I have an obligation to tell anyone?
Do I wake up my kids and immediate family members to share the double dose of bad news that had befallen us?
Would it be better to allow them a good night’s sleep and wait until the morning to provide an update that would hopefully be more encouraging?
Do I have the right to just keep it to myself?
To this day, I don’t know if I made the proper decision. I do know that I agonized about it throughout the remaining hours of darkness. At approximately 3 a.m., I reasoned it was too late to call. In other words, I talked myself into doing nothing.
Why wake them and ruin their night, too? What good would come from having them lose sleep worrying if their mother for some and daughter for others would be alive the following morning?
If I had made the call, exactly how much information would I have shared with them? Should I have been specific and informed them of every detail, or sugarcoated the events so it did not appear as distressing as it actually had been?
What was the best way to go? Why didn’t I know?
The truth of the matter is, years later, I still have not completely reconciled the issue within myself. I have yet to ask those I care most about: my children, our immediate family and closest friends whether they would want to be awakened with distressing news as opposed to waiting until the next day. How detailed would the want the information to be?
A conversation in advance of the potentially disturbing event is essential for all caregivers to have with those closest to the family. If a dialogue of this nature has yet to occur, I highly recommend you place it at the very top of your “To Do List.”