My girlfriend is a urologist and her patient had prostate cancer.
The strange thing was: his mother joined him when he was being consulted by my girlfriend.
Now it is not very common for parents (especially mothers) to accompany an adult child who is sick, but this case was different, very different.
This patient was gay.
And my girlfriend was looking through his medication history, and some of the medications he was on were pretty unfamiliar to her. So she asked about these medications, and he explained everything to her.
He was taking antiretroviral drugs because of his risky sex life (read: unprotected and also with HIV-positive men), as a precaution to becoming HIV-positive himself and worse.
My girlfriend found it extremely awkward (“the awkward silence”), but her mother sat down next to him without even moving an inch.
Even when he had to pull down his pants for the digital rectal exam.