Friday, October 26

An Essay On Loss


How to deal with Loss and the effects of Cancer and how to help someone you know who is dealing with it or any other kind of illness or grief. I feel that understanding and knowing how this kind of loss affects people, we can be better equipped to reach out in the right ways and appropriate times.

When someone is faced with the news and diagnosis of "Cancer" there are many losses that this person will experience. Cancer comes with many symptoms and your life is suddenly being struck with a threat in more ways than one. Some of the types of losses that an individual will experience are a threatened loss or a looming threat of what is to come, a loss of what might have been. Someone could also experience the loss of face, and being worried about what people will think , a loss of identity. With all these types of losses one will face with the threat of having cancer I would like to focus on  the loss of a sense of community and friends and that essentially being the loss of a social life and the effects it can bring.

It is ironic and such a sad reality to know that when someone is dealing with cancer and has all these different losses in their life already the one thing you need more than ever is people, friends, and community but they cannot have it all the time and actually at times not at all. Everyone in life has a role or two or many in their lives that they maintain before this illness strikes. The role of a mother or father, the role of a sister or brother, daughter or son and the role of a friend, a ministry church volunteer then cancer strikes and there they are more alone than ever before. This is called a loss of role they once had.  I believe that  people are not educated about the disease or are scared to reach out and they tend to back off, they look at them differently, they don't know how to respond or give to this person in their new "role" sometimes or the person with the cancer may start to act differently when in public and it shows forth their own distance and insecurities or the pain is showing and the lack of energy so people tend to not involve the person much anymore. 

I can think of another situation that would better explain on a more personal level. My mom had Breast Cancer about 15 years ago and she lived in the country of Washington State. When she was going through the Chemotherapy treatments and radiation there was a time that there was a pretty significant snow storm and she and my father were pretty much snowed in and unable to get anywhere for a couple of days and we also couldn't reach out to go to their house. She was in need of people and connections during this time already but it just increased her need all the more in this type of predicament. I remember my mom was starting to loose more hair at this time in the winter and it was very cold, she was alone in the country and so cancer patients go through so many different losses than one might initially consider as a loss. 

One way that a person with the loss of community , friends, and their network of social situation can deal with this and improve the quality of their life amongst these losses would be to join and be involved with a support group or to find a Hope Coach or other cancer survivors and be involved as much during this time.  By joining a group or community of people that understand your situation it can help them to grieve over the losses. To grieve means ; "that intense emotional suffering that we experience following loss. Since loss also can be defined as  "to bereave" it's also vital to have this person in a support group. To bereave mean to be robbed, something taken away. The person is learning to live without what they had before and we accustomed to. They are learning a whole new way of life and may feel very lost and alone so to have support and people around them makes sense.

Vicki Yount

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