Should a Physician Tell a Patient He/She Only Has So Long to Live?

I was thinking about my neighbors, whose doctor told the wife she had but six weeks left to live. On the one hand, I can understand the need to make sure that the patient has time to gather family members, or that they are in some way notified of the impending event, and also that the patient has time to get his/her affairs in order.

But reflecting back on my research the other day on how many people were in hospice, I remembered how in 2008, some 800,000 were in hospice, and of those, some 200,000 plus were still hanging in at the end of 2008, and some 200,000 plus more made it beyond that.  So what does that tell us?  I think that it would be ok to tell the person that they might not get better, but not to give it a time line. Let them live on as long as they do with some sense of hope. Everyone deserves to die still believing that they will live to see another day unless they are ready to go, and then that is something else. But it should be our choosing or our time, not that said to us by someone who gives us but a few minutes or possibly half an hour or so, while we live in our bodies 24/7.
This little quilt, "What Would Water Do?" was based on a poem that I had permission to reprint. In fact that lady now has the quilt which was made by me. Somehow it seemed to want to join this article.