The Five Stages of Grief

It’s real.

Denial:

When I found out about my diagnosis, I was shocked. As I described above, I was upset and shocked but I went to work 2 hours later and worked as if nothing had happened. During that 8 hour shift something happened. I was no longer that worried because, look, I’m totally fine! I might have this lump in my breast but it’s so small… it’s no problem! I’m working and seeing patients like it’s a normal shift. I did procedures, diagnosed patients, called consults, admitted/discharged… I was on the top of my doctoring game. See? Nothing has changed. I bet that tomorrow someone is going to call me and tell me it was a mistake. They mixed up my results with someone else and I actually just have a cyst. “Take motrin for pain and don’t worry about it,” yup, that’s what they’ll say. Yah, I never got that call.

Anger:

“About 1 in 8 U.S. women (about 12%) will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. In 2019, an estimated 268,600 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in women in the U.S.” Why me? Why out of the 155 million women in the U.S., do I have to get breast cancer?! It doesn’t make any sense! I’m still so young. Then, the guilt and anger towards myself set in. Was it because I didn’t exercise routinely? Was it because I ate so much junk food and used the microwave too much? Maybe, but it’s also probably part genetic. It’s my ancestors’ fault! Argh, is it my lifestyle? Everyone knows that shift work and night shifts are detrimental to our health:

“Night shift work was associated with women having an increased risk of breast, skin, and gastrointestinal cancer, according to a meta-analysis published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.”

I’m going to have to quit my job!

Bargaining:

Ok, so if I start eating well and exercising more now, maybe it will prevent recurrence or even the spread of my current cancer. Since I received my diagnosis, I started to take vitamins. I also started to try to cut back on sugar and carb intake, although this had been a huge challenge. I love my carbs and it’s my comfort food. With all this depressing news all I want to do is eat donuts, chocolate and pasta. But I am trying to cut back. I’m replacing my sweets with more natural sweets like fruits, fruit shakes, dried fruits, dark chocolate covered dried fruits, etc. I also started to run a mile every other day… but then I had surgery and egg harvesting (more on that later), and port placement, so I had to stop due to pain. But once all the pain goes away I hope to go back to frequent exercise.

Depression:

This is pretty self-explanatory. How can someone with cancer not be at least a bit depressed? The road ahead is going to be hard. This was not in my life plans. My life goals are being derailed because of this stupid cancer. My life will be on pause for at least a year while everyone else’s life will go on and advance accordingly to the next stage. You know in the Mario Cart video game when your opponent give you the baby mushroom so you shrink in size and you’re going at like 1/10 the speed as all the other players? Yah, that’s going to be me… for a whole year. I still cry sometimes. I have good days where I feel hopeful and strong... where I feel like I’m invincible and I can fight this. But I also have bad days where the worse case scenarios enter my mind. The thought of not seeing Landon grow up, graduate, get married. The thought of not going on international trips with Dan or my friends.  The thought of my parents having to go through sadness and grief. The thought of losing my hair, and vomiting from chemo side effects. Yes, and even the thought of dying. It scares the hell out of me. These days I feel depressed and I cry.

Acceptance:

I have breast cancer. There, I said it. Ok, fine, I’m still working on the acceptance part.

To be honest, the stages of grief are not linear. It’s not like one stages happens, it’s over, and you move on to the next stage. It’s more like you go in circles... but in circles that are not in order. So more like figure of eight loops, but then you can go back a stage so more like random squiggly lines. Like the other week, after I had my surgery and I was waiting for my appointment with my oncologist, I secretly had hopes that my oncologist would say that I don’t need chemo because all my cancer was taken out! Talk about denial creeping back in! So, yes, right now my life feels like I’m in a Mario Cart race where my cart is infected by the small mushroom poison going in squiggly lines.