佐々木：父がとても痛がっているんです。痛み止めをお願いできませんか。
医者：1日3回以上は無理ですね。治療に差しつかえますから。
佐々木：痛みを抑えることを優先するという風に、考え直していただけませんか。
Kangae-naosu
(Byooin de)
Sasaki: Chichi ga totemo itagatte iru n' desu. Itami-dome wo onegai dekimasen ka.
Isha: Ichi-nichi san-kai ijoo wa muri desu ne. Chiryoo ni sashi-tsukaemasu kara.
Sasaki: Itami wo osaeru koto wo yuusen suru to iu fuu ni, kangae-naoshite itadakemasen ka.
(In hospital)
Sasaki: My father's in terrible pain. Can't you give him a painkiller?
Doctor: He can't take them more than three tunes a day. It would interfere with the treatment.
Sasaki: But don't you think relieving the pain should come first? Won't you reconsider?
Kangae-naosu means to reconsider, to revise your first thoughts on a subject or to change your mind. There are many examples of expressions in Japanese which
add -naosu to the base form of a verb to convey the idea of doing something over again and correcting it, such as omoi-naosu (to rethink), yari-naosu (to do over again), kaki-naosu (to write over again) and yomi-naosu (to read through again).
You can't argue with what your doctor says, or at least so people tend to think. Once you're admitted to hospital you're in the doctor's hands, and there's
nothing you can do about it. They say that Kanja wa manaita no ue no koi (A patient is like a carp on a cutting board). But when it comes to a situation in which a member of your own family is involved, it's a different matter. When the patient is in extreme pain and obviously suffering, I think relieving the pain should come before anything else. Isha wa chiryoo no hoohoo wo kangae-naosu beki da (The doctor should reconsider the method of treatment).
"If all the treatment does is postpone the patient's death for a month or so, and if it means suffering all that time, you can hardly call it extending their life," I argued with the doctor. And in the end, Isha wa tsui ni kangae-naoshite kureta (The doctor gave in and changed his decision).
Thanks to the painkillers my father, who had been in such pain, occasionally started smiling again, and was able to enjoy listening to his favorite music. Isha ga kangae-naoshite kurete, honto ni yokatta (I'm really glad the doctor changed his mind).
It's hard watching someone you love suffer so badly. And as for the view that the doctor's judgment is always right, Soo iu taido wa kangae-naosu beki da to omotte imasu (I think that attitude needs to be reconsidered).