When the Future Is Not Now: With Optimism Comes Hope

Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology essay, “When the Future Is Not Now,” by Janet Retseck, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The essay is followed by an interview with Retseck and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Drawing on cultural history, Retseck explores a dying cancer patient’s persistent optimism.

TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: When the Future Is Not Now, by Janet Retseck, MD, PhD 

 The most optimistic patient I have ever met died a few years ago of lung cancer. From the beginning, Mr L was confident that he would do well, enthusiastically telling me, “I’ll do great!” As chemoradiation for his stage III lung cancer commenced, he did do well. Until he got COVID.

And then reacted to the chemotherapy. And then was admitted with pneumonia. And then c. difficile diarrhea. And then c. diff again. But whenever we checked in with him, he reported, “I’m doing great!” He could not wait to return to treatment, informing me, “We’re going to lick this, Doc!” Of course I asked him if he wanted to know prognosis, and of course he said no, because he was going to do great. He trusted that his radiation oncologist and I would be giving him the absolute best treatment for his cancer, and we did. In the end, weak and worn out and in pain, with cancer in his lungs and lymph nodes and liver and even growing through his skin, he knew he was not doing great. But he remained thankful, because we had done our best for him. Our best just wasn’t enough.

While it can overlap with hope, optimism involves a general expectation of a good future, whereas hope is a specific desire or wish for a positive outcome. Research has shown that for patients with cancer, maintaining optimism or hope can lead to better quality of life.1,2 As an oncologist, I am in favor of anything that helps my patients live longer and better, but sometimes I also wonder if there is any real cause for optimism, because the odds of living at all with advanced cancer are just so bad. From 2013 to 2019, the 5-year relative survival rate for people with stage III lung cancer was 28%. For stage IV disease, it was just 7%.3 Immunotherapy and targeted treatments have improved outcomes somewhat, but the chances for most patients of living more than a couple of years after being diagnosed remain low. Even with our best treatments, there seems to be more reason for despair than optimism. Yet here was my patient and his persistent optimism, his faith in treatment to give him a good future, and my hope that he was right, even when I knew he was probably wrong. What drives this belief in a good future, a better future, in the face of such a rotten present? Optimism as a word and a philosophy emerged in the 18th century in the work of German thinker Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. As it was for my patient, optimism served as a way to negotiate the problem of human suffering.

 Attempting to explain how a perfect, omniscient, and loving God could allow so much suffering, imperfection, and evil, Leibniz argued that God has already considered all possibilities and that this world is the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz did not mean that