Asbestos

Grief

Adults and Grief

Stages of Grief and Anticipatory Grief in Adults

Dealing with grief is always hard no matter what the case is. Experience grief is normal; it shows that you are human. Each person responds to grief in a unique way. It is especially difficult to deal with grief with your own death once you find out you are suffering from a terminal disease, such as mesothelioma. This kind of grief is called anticipatory grief. The fact that this disease slowly kills can be seen as a mixed blessing. For some it allows enough time for second chances, one last special memory, or the opportunity to seek forgiveness and reconciliation from loved ones. On the other hand patients must cope with the concept that they don't have the next 20 or 40 years they had planned on to retire in their dream spot or watch their children hit milestones such as graduations and weddings. For some the overwhelming sense of being robbed of these times will rage within the patient and may actually reduce their current level of health if allowed to continue, as all anger does. Despite all dreams, hopes and prayers patients, and those who love them, must accept the inevitable fact that they are dying. No two people process grief in the same way, and the fact that they know what end they will come to may make the process of dying more familiar and less imitating. This anticipatory grief often includes all the classic stages of grief, numbness, anger, disbelief, depression, and ultimately acceptance. The only difference from most deaths is that the person dying must also grieve.

Often patients sit in a state of shell shock in the doctor's office trying to absorb that they have a terminal illness. They are in a state of disbelief and will often feel numb. Most then go through denial that they are diagnosed, that this couldn't possibly be happening to them. This first stage typically lasts less than 10 days.

As they gradually accept their diagnosis, there commonly is a sense of injustice, anger and fear. Injustice that this happened to them instead of someone else, or at their employer for not taking better care of them, at their God for allowing this to happen, or even at themselves for getting sick at all. This anger is doubled by the fear of dying; suddenly the unknown looms up from the nearest horizon threatening to destroy what happiness they may still find in life. The helplessness that is associated with mesothelioma can cause depression in patients that have been diagnosed. As with all terminal illnesses there comes a time when the patient finally accepts that they are going to die, this allows patients to complete tasks such as writing a last will and testament, and saying goodbye. Patients in this stage may also exhibit absent-mindedness, numbness, restlessness, crying, fatigue, loss or gain of appetite, and may be unable to sleep normally. They may also experience guilt at broken relationships, missed opportunities, and the inability to do all that they had planned in life.