Dead was a diagnosis, and it was definitive. People knew about it. Its reputation preceded it. But illness—illness was a vast chasm of maybe. The patient and anyone who loved and needed the patient felt desperate, and there was a temptation to use your power as a doctor to make everything okay, or to allude to a future okayness of everything (in a malpractice-insurance-clad way) that would be totally acceptable and get you off the hook from a true confrontation of emotion until further down the line when things got too bad to ignore.
