Final Silence: The Weight of Unspoken Words

Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "Final Silence” by Dr. Ju Won Kim, who is an Assistant Professor at Korea University College of Medicine, Medical Oncology. The article is followed by an interview with Kim and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr Kim explores the burden of silence when caring for dying patients.

TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: Final Silence, by Ju Won Kim 

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I am a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami.

We are so thrilled to have joining us today, Dr. Ju Won Kim. She is Assistant Professor at Korea University College of Medicine, and she is here to discuss her Journal of Clinical Oncology article, "Final Silence."

Ju Won, thank you for contributing to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us today to discuss your article.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Hello, Mikkael. It's really nice to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's so nice to have you here today also. Thank you for also taking time so late in the evening because our time difference is so huge.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, it's not that late. It's 9 o'clock in Seoul. 9:00 PM.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I wonder if I could start by asking you if you can tell us about yourself. Could you walk us through your career so far?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yes. I am Ju Won Kim from Korea University in Seoul. I was born and also raised here and never really left from Seoul. I did my residency in internal medicine and fellowship in oncology at the same hospital, and now I'm an assistant professor there. So you could say I've spent my whole life on the same campus, just moving from one side of the hallway to another.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That's a beautiful way of describing it. Is that common in Korea for somebody to remain at the same institution for training and then to continue through your career?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: It used to be common about a decade ago, but nowadays it is not that common. Most of my colleagues are from another campus or another hospital.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, I'm so curious, what is a typical week like for you? How many days do you spend seeing patients and how much time do you spend doing research or writing or have other responsibilities?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Usually, I spend four times for my outpatient clinic, but in Korea, there are so many cancer patients and so little number of medical oncologists. I usually treat so many patients in one clinic, like maybe 20 to 30 in one time.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Wow.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, that's a burden. Most of the time I spend treating my patients, and rest of them I use to spend for my research with my lab students, and maybe with my colleagues, and I have to write something like documents or some kind of medical articles. That is about 10 or 20% of my working time, I think.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Okay, okay. That makes sense. So, and do you specialize within oncology, or do you see any person who has cancer?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: I'm a medical oncologist, and I used to treat breast cancer or biliary pancreatic cancer or some kind of liver cancer or rare cancer, maybe, also.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Okay, okay. It's such a long trip. Are you able to make it to the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, I've been Chicago for ASCO meeting just one time in this year. Actually, I gave birth to my son in March, and I was in the long vacation for my birth, and the last part of my birth vacation, I went to Chicago to participate in ASCO. It was a really good time.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Oh, fantastic. That's great.

How about your own story as a writer? How long have you been writing narrative pieces and when did you start?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, I've always thought of myself more as a reader than a writer. Reading was my comfort zone from childhood. Then I started a small book club with friends about 10 years ago, and we began writing short reflections after each meeting. That's how writing slowly became part of my routine. When reading feels heavy, I write. When writing feels tiring, I read. It's a rhythm that keeps me balanced. At first, it was only academic writing like medical articles, but a few years ago, I challenged myself to post one short reflection a month on my Instagram, usually a quote from a book and a few sentences on why it mattered to me. It was my life about writing.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That is really remarkable. So, did you take any formal writing classes at university?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Not really. It was just a hobby of my own.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It always impresses me when people come into writing organically like this, where they just discover it and start and don't have formal teaching because your writing is very, very good.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Oh, thank you.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: And how do you find the time to read and write when you have a busy career, academic career, and you have a child?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: It was my old routine that I used to read it before going to bed, from my bedside with a small light, I used to read some novels and get to sleep easily. But after I started to work as a medical oncologist, it was a very busy job as you know. I used to sleep more and not have time for reading. I try to read more when I get some free time.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I love how you talk about alternating reading and writing and how when one gets too heavy, you go to the other, and then you switch back. One of the most common pieces of advice I've heard from writers is to read more.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You can see how other people put thoughts together and the cadence of their writing, and also it inspires your mind to develop new ideas for writing.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, the new idea also comes from the book, I think, when I came into a new book and the idea bangs up with me, so I started to write and that's an easy way to have some idea about writing.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I'm always impressed by people who are facile with languages and bilingual or trilingual. I think I'm unfortunately a hopeless monoglot.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Maybe you can try Korean.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I'd be embarrassed to even attempt it. When you read, do you read in Korean or do you read in English or other languages?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Definitely in Korean.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Okay, okay. And when do you find the space to write? Do you need to be alone at home in a special room or at a special desk, or do you write at work, or do you just find any time to write?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: I usually don't have much time on my own because I have my baby now and some family gathers frequently. So, I always write every free time I'm trying to, any short free time in my work maybe.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: If you feel comfortable doing so - this is a very heavy piece, and a lot of us have dealt with deaths of our own patients, of course, we see this unfortunately commonly in oncology, but many of us, myself included, have also dealt with patients or their family members who've committed suicide - can you tell us what prompted you to write this piece?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: As an oncologist treating biliary and pancreatic cancers, I've witnessed many deaths, as you know. Most fade with time because I treat so many patients, but just one family stayed with me, I think. It was early in my career, just months after I started this specialty, and even 5 years later, I still think about them, the family I wrote about in the "Final Silence." The story eventually became the piece I wrote.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: And what is it about them that caused you to think about them so much even years later?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: I'm not sure. That's the only experience I came into someone's suicide so closely in my life, I think, and also it happened in my very early career. That's the impact.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It is amazing how certain patients stick with us even years or decades later, particularly when they're tied to an emotional response to illness, and that can be our patients' emotional response or our own.

Can you talk some about Korean culture and how cancer is viewed? Is it discussed openly?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: In Korea, death is still a quiet topic. Cancer equals death in many people's minds, and death equals grief. Even today, some families ask doctors not to tell their patients about the diagnosis, but Korea is aging so fast, so I see more older patients now, but culturally, we are still learning how to talk about dying openly. That's the big problem as a medical oncologist, especially treating biliary and pancreatic cancers.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I can just imagine. When you first meet a patient and their family is in the room, do you tell them that they have cancer, or do you need to check in with the family and with the patient how much they know about their diagnosis first?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, I usually try to tell them there is a cancer, which can never be treated perfectly, because I used to treat patients with stage four, which is incurable, but I'm not sure is it okay to tell them that your life is about 3 months or 6 months or 1 year. It is not that okay for the Korean patients, especially the first time when they meet me in the clinic. I try to tell them about the truth just a few times later.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I think that's common. I think we do that in the United States also. We may not mention a number to patients during that very first meeting because when you're talking to somebody and once you mention that number, often people will shut down. They won't hear anything else that you say. And you need to build up a relationship and some trust with somebody and also get the sense how much they want to know about their cancer and their prognosis before entering that conversation.

I've certainly had instances when I'm in a room with a patient, and that patient's spouse or children, and someone else in the room will say, "How long does Dad have to live?" And I've turned to my patient, “Dad”, and said, "Is this a number that you want to know?" And the patient has said, "No, I don't."

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, that happens.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: So sometimes we have to be careful and check in and remind ourselves in the high emotions around a cancer diagnosis that our first responsibility is always to our patient and what they want to know about their diagnosis and their prognosis.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Do you have any opposite cases where patients really want to know the numbers?

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah, I do. And, you know, you can almost predict who that's going to be depending on what they did during their lives.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yes.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: So I have patients who are engineers or who have a math-based career like they're accountants and they'll come in and they write every number down and they want to know the number about their prognosis. I have other patients who are English professors and they want descriptively to know what the prognosis is but maybe don't want a number. So...

Dr. Ju Won Kim: I think most Koreans want the number, the specific number. Yeah.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I'm curious, is cancer in a father or a son dealt with differently than cancer in a mother or a daughter?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: I don't think there's much difference between sons and daughters, or maybe moms and dad, because every child is very precious in Korea now, but between husband and wives, I think the dynamic stands out. People often say when a husband gets cancer, the wife becomes his main caregiver, but when the wife gets cancer, sometimes the husband disappears. I've heard that from my colleagues, though not often in my own clinic. Now, what I do see is many middle-aged women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, women coming to treatment alone, strong and very independent.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Interesting. So I was going to follow up by asking if you've seen that in your own clinic. Have you seen- is it more likely that your female patients who have a cancer diagnosis come to clinic alone but the male patients come with their spouse and with family support?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, it is not just because of their sex, but most of the breast cancer patients who are female are in good condition, but biliary pancreatic cancer male patients have very poor condition, so...

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Ah...

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Maybe, I think that's the problem.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Interesting.

The part of your essay in which you describe the attempted suicide of your patient's daughter is absolutely chilling. How did that affect you? Have you ever had a patient attempt suicide before?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yes, the event I wrote in my essay was extremely shocking for me, but it's the only experience I have. It wasn't my patient, but I've heard a few cases where someone in the hospital tried to take their own life. I haven't had that happen directly, but I've seen patients fall into deep depression or break down in tears. In those moments, I always suggest psychiatry nowadays. That used to be taboo in here, but the stigma is fading, and many patients actually feel better afterwards. I also check in with close family members because their mental state affects the patients, too. It's something I hope never to experience again.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's so unsettling when that happens, and as I mentioned, I've had a patient who took his own life, and you go back and back and back to it to wonder if there's something you could have done to intervene quicker or to get that psychosocial support in place to help that patient so that you avoid it in the future. And, you know, you protect your patients and yourself.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, I try to.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Speaking of protecting, you write, and I'm going to quote you to you, "I told myself I was protecting her, that to burden her in her final hours with such unthinkable news would be cruel. But a deeper truth is that I was protecting myself. I didn't know how to say it. I didn't know how to bear the weight of her devastation on top of my own shock and helplessness, so I avoided it." Do we owe it to ourselves sometimes to protect ourselves from the pain we sometimes impart to our patients?

Dr. Ju Won Kim: That reflection came from realizing how doctors sometimes say we are protecting patients from pain, but really, we are protecting ourselves, I think. It's human. We can't hold every piece of suffering we see. Setting emotional boundaries isn't weakness. It's survival. What matters is recognizing when it's self-protection and being honest about it later.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, I think something that really helps with that is being able to talk to our colleagues about times when this happens and recognize we're in a shared experience and that we have the support of our colleagues, and they recognize how hard it is to be the bearer of bad news to other people and to bring pain to them sometimes.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: That really works.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Dr. Ju Won Kim, it has been such a pleasure having you on this show. Dr. Kim has written just a fabulous essay called "Final Silence" for JCO Art of Oncology. Thank you so much for sharing your article with us and for joining us today.

Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, thank you so much for the conversation. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: If you've enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you're looking for more episodes and context, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts.

Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for Cancer Stories.

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.

Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.

Show Notes:

Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review.


Guest Bio:
Dr Ju Won Kim is an Assistant Professor at Korea University College of Medicine, Medical Oncology.