...cancer doctors have the worst God complexes of any doctors short of neurosurgeons. They assume they can cure everything, and pay no attention to anything that ISN'T the cancer they are magically curing.

Obviously Dr. Gloom isn't right either, but it's good to bear in mind that different specialties have different delusions, and the only people who are likely to look at your dad as a person rather than as a set of challenges are the nurses.