Dr. Vince Leone sees patients excited about treatment while spouses worry about cost and logistics. He stresses that spouses must attend the treatment planning meeting so both agree on the plan, since they often become the patient's strongest advocate.
Number 3 is your spouse. I'm bored with this. You can have a patient come in and they're like gung-ho, like, yes, this is the program for me, doc. I'm so excited. And then, they go home. Usually, it's the wife I find. They go home and the husband is just like, you're going to do what? You're going to spend what? You're going to— things like that. Have you ever heard someone say they're going to do submarine decompression? What the heck is that? They're going to put you on the torture rock chamber. I literally had a patient say that. I'm like, this is lost in translation. That's why you need the spouse at the ROF. The bottom line is, yeah, spouse at an ROF is huge. Having them both in agreement that this is a good plan. And so in some ways, that spouse many times wants the patient better, if not more, than the person themselves that are dealing with it does.
