Final Word: You’re not dying, try to be happy!

Did you see this story today? I heard Pamela read this story this morning and I couldn’t believe it!
Here goes … .

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A judge in Montana has ordered the Fort Harrison VA Medical Center to pay nearly $60,000 to a man who was wrongly diagnosed with brain cancer and told he had just a few months to live. U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy wrote that the distress Mark Templin and his family suffered was caused by a doctor’s “negligent failure to meet the standard of care” in delivering the diagnosis in 2009. The judge says in the months Templin believed he was dying he quit his job, sold his pickup truck, celebrated a “last” birthday and contemplated suicide.

I hope the guy gets his job back. I really do. But mistakes happen, and I think I might be OK with the “living like I am dying” idea, if only for a year. I mean, isn’t that what most people say they would do if they could do it over? And we never seem to do it.

I am 99 percent serious when I say that I think instead of a lawsuit, this “victim” should send the doctor a thank-you note.