Grief and Acceptance - Part VII

Since my last post, I've been wrestling with what I believe about the struggle between grief and acceptance.

Needing more time, today I'll share Part 4 of the series "Managing Uncertainty," a topic germane to this discussion and newly available online at Oncology Times.

For this concluding piece I offer clinicians a patient handout to edit and use whatever way serves them well in their practice. Here's a snippet:

Dear Patient,

One of the challenges of life after cancer is uncertainty -- uncertainty about what is happening now, what will happen in the future, and what we can do.

Problems arise if your normal reactions to uncertainty interfere with your ability to make wise decisions. Or if your thoughts and feelings make it difficult for you to feel hopeful, communicate with family and friends, enjoy celebratons or pursue pleasurable activites.

This handout offers insights and tips on healthy ways to manage your reactions to uncertainty.

After offering a useful paradigm, I introduce a key force of healing: hope. A long list of specific hopes for different situations leads to my conclusion:

Whatever happens, keep in mind that cancer didn't make life uncertain. Cancer merely exposed the uncertainty of life.

Every step of the way, let's work together to change what can be changed and to accept the things we cannot change. Let's find and nourish the many hopes that can help you get good care and live as fully as possible today, tomorrow, and every day.

To read the full article, click here.

Comments

[Jan Baird Hasak]

This applies to other situations besides cancer--any time uncertainty creates chaos in our lives and leaves emotional turmoil in its wake. Thanks for this series.
Jan

[Bill Kleine]

I really like the way you counterbalance uncertainty with hope. It is not hope that is irrational, but certainty. Hope embraces possibility where certainty denies it. Each day is so full of opportunites to experience joy. Hope simply the disposition to see these clearly.

When Dick Bloch was first diagnosed [H&R Block] the doctor pronounced him dead. It nearly killed him. He then found a doctor who focused on what could be done. I remember a letter he sent to a prominent medical journal in rebuttal of an article about the cruelty of false hope. Dick was no fool; he saw many good people die of cancer. But he was adament that hope, in whatever form circumstances dictate, is the only way to live.

Dick spent the next many years of his life inspiring hope in people though his Foundation, the survivor parks he and his wife built all over the country, National Cancer Survivor's Day, but most impressively person to person with countless cancer patients. His office remained at the H&R Block World Headquarters, but his phone answered the Cancer Hotline.

[Wendy S. Harpham, MD]

Dear Bill,
Thanks for your comments and for bringing up Dick Block.

In the early 1990s Block's book was one of the first I read, leading me to the concept of a Healthy Survivor. His message rings as true today as it did then.

With hope, Wendy