Well as i mentioned previously i recently recieved the news that i will have to undergo a fourth operation in June to remove a fourth tumour. What i didn’t mention is that the reason for this is the tumour is growing towards my facial nerves and if left to grow could damage those nerves. This got me thinking of the old saying “ignorance is bliss”.

Now on the one hand, its good to know why they’ll be removing the tumour (when in a previous letter from the same doctors they informed me it wouldnt be neccesary) and knowing the potential risks involved means i can better prepare myself should worst come to worst. But on the other hand i have a horribly active imagination when it comes to imagining what the worst case scenario could be. With that in mind i can’t help but wonder if it might not have been better if they hadn’t told me. I know they’re required to tell me the risks of surgery, i’ve signed enough of those damn forms to know that. But the surgery is four months away, did they really need to tell me now?

On a similiar vein theres that age old question of “if you had an incurable cancer, would you want to know? or would you want to live out the last days of your life in blissful ignorance?” Personnly i don’t know what i’d prefer in that situation and hope im never in a position to have make the decision.

Earlier this evening i was watching “Terry Pratchett: Living with Alzheimers” and there was one part of the programme where Terry and his assistant were speaking to a specialist on the form of Alzheimers he has and his assistant asked “how long?”, to which Terry exclaimed “don’t answer that” as he preffered not to know specifics.

Ignorance is bliss. Well i geuss it’s contextual and a very personnal choice. Some people may want to know things no matter how bad they are in order to come to terms with them, others may prefer not to know so they can live in hope or atleast without the looming spectre. As for me, despite the nefarious horrors my imagination conjures up when i’m lieing awake at night i still prefer to know, for me if i know whats to come i can prepare myself for it. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

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Tags: choice, Ignorance, knowing

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 12:47 am and is filed under People. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.