The article describes the personal experience of a doctor who cared for a colleague with metastatic cancer, where there was nothing to say and they just exchanged views on the inevitable. A former BMJ colleague, Tessa Richards, was diagnosed with metastatic cancer in 2003, 20 years after she left her career as a doctor to join the editorial staff of the BMJ. At the time, articles proposing a "cure" for cancer were shelved as unlikely. Cancer mortality peaked in 1989 (doi:10.1136/bmj.s491). The emphasis was on prevention, while treatment seemed hopeless with more pain and little benefit.