but for the rest of us in the hoi polloi, the sense was, doctors knew best. we have become much more honest. basically, you know, patients' rights, patients' autonomy has been increasingly realized. so we no longer really feel we have the right to withhold information from them. so certainly, much more frankly and much earlier, we tell patients about fatal diagnoses. i was just on a shopping line in a grocery store with my young son. he was three at the time, and i was holding him my arms and facing forward, and he was facing backward, and all of a sudden, he said, "daddy... man fat!" i turned around. of course, there was this gi-hugic man... behind me. and i said, "oh, sorry." and he said, "that's okay. at least he was being honest." and that, of course, is the truth. honesty is indeed the best policy. and we have to disembody ourselves from all these walls we put up so that we can hold someone's hands and say that we're going to be there with them and for them, and we're going to help them through this... because we can. i deal with fact, however... gruesom