How One Doctor Tells Patients They Are Dying
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Theodore Schwartz, a neurosurgeon at Weill Cornell Medicine and best-selling author of Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery, shares how he approaches one of the most difficult responsibilities in medicine: delivering bad news to patients with terminal and late-stage brain cancer. Drawing on decades of experience, Dr. Schwartz explains how honesty, compassion, and clarity guide these conversations, even when there is no cure to offer. He reflects on what patients ask when time is short, how doctors prepare for moments medicine cannot fix, and why the way bad news is delivered can matter as much as the news itself.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.6 | This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Up next, |
| 0:23.4 | the story from a brain surgeon, one of the best in the country, about how he breaks bad news to |
| 0:30.7 | patients. His name is Dr. Theodore Schwartz. His book, Gray Matters, a biography of brain |
| 0:37.4 | surgery, is an amazing read. He's a real-life |
| 0:41.3 | brain surgeon at Wild Cornell Medicine in New York City, one of the busiest and highest-ranked |
| 0:48.0 | neurosurgery centers in the world. He's also a heck of a storyteller. We did a longer |
| 0:54.0 | version of the whole story of brain |
| 0:56.3 | surgery. And you can go to our American Stories.com and search for Dr. Theodore Schwartz. Here now |
| 1:04.0 | is Dr. Schwartz talking about how he breaks bad news to patients. The initial office visit, in facts, can be surreal. At this early |
| 1:13.8 | stage, the patient is often minimally symptomatic. They're obviously aware that something |
| 1:18.1 | is growing in their brain. They sought out medical care after all. And they know it needs to be |
| 1:22.8 | removed. Maybe they've done a little research, or they've had a family member with a brain tumor, |
| 1:27.3 | which may or may not have been similar. |
| 1:29.6 | They're also often scared and unsure of what lies ahead or what it all means. |
| 1:33.5 | Commonly, they're frequently somewhat oblivious to the gravity of the situation. |
| 1:37.6 | This is all new to them, but as I listen to their questions, I see things they are not yet capable of seeing, let alone processing. |
| 1:45.2 | I see the mother of three young children who will not make it to their high school graduation. |
| 1:49.7 | I see the father and sole provider for a family of teenagers with college payments looming |
| 1:54.1 | who will not be walking his daughter down the aisle. I see the hedge fund manager who is sitting |
| 1:59.2 | on top of the world, planning his retirement and next lavish vacation, who will soon be closing his fund. |
... |
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