Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:56:27 -0700 (PDT)

Grief and Chronic Illness

Teresa, that Prof you worked with was dead wrong. In many ways Grief has
everything to do with it. He obviously is not at all familiar with the
works of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. Although her focus was on death and dying,
she stated that the grief cycles she identified apply to any loss faced in
life.

With every loss faced, a grief cycles begins. We face shock, denial,
bargining, anger, and acceptance.. not always in this order, and we face
them repetedly in ever lessening magnitudes until they fade away. The
usual series of the cycles is 18 months, if we go through them and do not
stuff the emotions away undelt with. If we don't deal with them as they
happen.. we only postpone their resolution.

I go back to Jenny.

Jenny went to her doctor because she just could not cope with feeling ill
all of the time. It was getting in the way of doing all the things she
loved to do, and had to do. At first her doctor was sure that he could
find and solve her problem. But he can't find what is wrong, and tells
Jenny that she is simply doing too much and must cut back on her
activities as she is "Burnt Out". But she has been "burnt out" before and
she knows that this is more than that. So another grief cycle takes hold,
this loss being the loss of health itself. Hope and Denial can often be
mingled and intertwined, with Bargaining thrown in for good measure. "If I
only do such-and-such I will be well!". Shock comes with each negative
diagnosis.. each lead turned false, each hope for a diagnosis with a known
cure dashed. Anger flares at herself, her doctor, her illness.. he boss,
her children, her peers; to everyone who doesn't understand or care. Just
as she accepts one avenue being gone, she is launched in another direction
to repete the medical dance once more.

 Another grief cycle starts when she is forced to give up being a soccer
coach, for she loved being out with the kids. But she had to give up
something because she felt unwell all of the time, and discovered to her
dismay that she always felt worse the day after she tore around the
playing pitch with her team. Jenny feels her world slipping away from her,
but she denies that this will be a permenant loss. She is angry with her
body, with the illness, with the doctors who cannot fix her, her boss who
overworks her and the people who just refuse to understand that she really
has no choice but to give up this role.

 When Jenny gets still sicker and loses her job, a major grief cycle hits
hard. The loss of a job is a major life event, a major source of stress.
The Da*n Disease is tolerant of little stress, and she gets sicker. She
must morn each lost bit of self just as each larger role. Jenny the worker
is gone. She must grieve for the skills she has lost as well as the
ability to hold down a job.

When the family finances collapse and they lose their home, another major
life event hits with health devistating stress and another major grief
cycle begins. When her husband Jay leaves her and files for divorce,
another major cycle begins. Jenny doesn't have the time to get through the
big cycles let alone regain her health before the next blow hits.

 Like pebbles dropped into a pond, ripples of grief eat upon the psyche.
They hit upon the edges of the psyche like ripples hitting a barrier and
bouncing back. Waves cross, converge, and cancel each other out. Some
merge to form tsunami waves that swamp the psyche and smash the spirit.
Like a punch-drunk boxer Jenny can take no more trauma. She is helpless
and confused, at the mercy or a merciless society. The "smallest" event
could push her over the brink.. her mind could snap. Her body fail. Jenny
could die.

 The lost self must be morned; all the lost selves must be morned. Without
this, no healing of the psyche and spirit can be done. The wounds must be
healed, because the wounding is unending. Jenny gets a remission and is
sure that she has found a cure. But then a relapse takes it all away and
she is devistated all over again. The disease rarely is a smooth downhill
slide. One set of symptoms wanes while something new flares up. You
grieve, your heal, you adapt.. you grieve, you heal, you adapt.. over and
over and over again.. cycles without end, amen.

 Gayle and I have both had experience with online friends who have reached
their breaking points, and we have been there ourselves. Both of us have
done time in suicide watch, sometimes we have sat up all night online
doing email tag with a friend on the verge of suicide because of
overwhelming griefs, or been on the phone with them. It always comes back
to grief.


Phyllis Griffiths