I was rewatching an old video on YouTube and the guy was able to walk again after 10 months of practicing yoga and losing 140 lbs. If no one on earth can exactly predict when someone will die or if they’ll be able to walk again, how and why do doctors come up with these predictions?
https://youtu.be/qX9FSZJu448
In: Mathematics
I think the “you have X weeks to live” is a product of hollywood more than it is reality. No doctor I’ve worked with makes predictions like that. They might say something like “the data shows that most people take X weeks to recover” or talk about 5 year survival rates with the patient, but I’ve never heard them say ” you have X months to live” because, as you note, they just don’t know. They’ve all had patients who improve for a while, only to suddenly deteriorate and pass. On the flip side, they’ve all had patients who beat the odds for years, sometimes even decades.
The only time I’ve seen them make a specific prediction, is when filling out Death with Dignity paperwork, which requires the patient to have less than 6 months(in my state at least).This is usually based on averages I assume, but honestly it could just be an (informed) guess.
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