Apparently, there is a literary style in use here...
...with which you are unfamiliar. Sorry bout that. Let me try to explain without using that [link|#literarydevice|literary device].
When someone in a position of authority, who has (or potentially has) information that can be unpleasant to listen to, prefaces his/her statement with something along the lines of, "Don't freak out, but...", you are immediately keyed to expect the worst. It has been my experience (on both ends of such a statement — which is why I don't preface my remarks so) that once so conditioned, the purported listener actually stops actively listening, and starts racing ahead filling in the spaces between the words with mind noise twinged with the coloring of the aforementioned worst. So when the doctor in your scenario starts out with, "Don't freak out, but...",what is really happening is that the doctor is conditioning the recipient of the bad news about his daughter to freak out, with negative effects to both the immediate problem at hand (the curing of the disease) and the long term relationship with the daughter ("You promiscuous slut...your grounded until you're 30!"). My response, girlo, is to your simpleminded, almost pollyannaish approach to something that needs anything except a simpleminded, pollyannish approach.
Clear?
The "literary device" I was referring to is the use of the word "read:" (with the colon), followed by a translation of the target phrase into what the phrase is supposed to mean to someone when they read it. I'm sorry if you were unaware of the device; I hope this explanation makes my previous post more clear.
