If a doctor diagnoses you with a serious illness and suggests palliative care, don't jump to conclusions.
It doesn't mean you have mere months to live, NIH News in Health emphasizes.
Palliative care, which is focused on comfort care and symptom management, may be recommended at any stage of a chronic or serious illness. But it is often confused with hospice care, which is comfort care for patients in the final months of life and requires that all treatments be discontinued.
"Embracing palliative care does not mean that you're giving up on treatment," said Alexis Bakos, an aging expert at the National Institutes of Health. "Ideally, palliative care should be offered at the very beginning of a diagnosis of any serious illness."
Related
