Cancer Stories: The Art Of Oncology

"My Mother's Last Lesson," by Colt Williams: A resident learns about managing mental illness during cancer treatment.   TRANSCRIPT Narrator: My Mother's Last Lesson, by Colt Williams, MD (10.1200/JCO.21.02382)   In January 2017, my 65-year-old mother was diagnosed with treatable cancer. The problem was that she did not want to live.   Her mental health had declined precipitously after losing my father 8 years before, and her grief proved insurmountable. She had been a functional alcoholic for most of my life, and commonly smoothed over the roughness of a long day with half a bottle of whiskey. Growing up, alcohol had been ubiquitous to the point of banality, yet she was nonetheless able to lead a very successful life. But the silence of my father's absence was deafening, and her few moments of relief were only ever found at the bottom of a bottle. Her life came apart at the seams as she had stopped working, lost contact with most of her friends, and rarely left the house. Then, after years of limitless sorrow