The Grieving Process

Having a chronic illness is hard, its hard to live with, hard to get your head around an hard to accept that you have got said illness. When I was diagnosed I started to grieve, grieve for the life I had and for the future I do not know  -it is ok to grieve when diagnosed with a chronic illness - its ok to grieve for anything that interrupts life and stops life briefly - loss of a job, loss of a loved one, relationship breakdown etc

There is a grieving process - and its important to remember that all people grieve differently. Some people, like me, will wear their emotions on their sleeve and be outwardly emotional - which people can find hard to cope with. Others will experience their grief more internally, and may not cry. But it is important to remember that people's grieve experiences should not be judged as each person experiences it differently. 

The five steps in grieving re:

• Denial and Isolation - so in my case denying I have MS and feeling alone as my parents and friends did not understand how I was feeling - how the illness effected me etc. However this is a temporary process and I knew I was not alone   - I knew and still know that I have a support network, which is important for everyone to have, and people cared for me and were praying for me

• Anger  - as the masking effects of denial and isolation begin to wear off, reality and its pain re-emerge. We are not ready. The intense emotion is deflected from our vulnerable core, redirected and expressed instead as anger. And then after being angry we feel guilty at being angry which makes us more angry. I can't say I was truly angry - would say more extremely frustrated. But I was angry at the doctors in the hospital who passed me off on my trip to A&E as having a migraine!! I would love to go back to them now and go "Migraine, yeah whatever mate"! 

• Bargaining is the next process but I don't think I went through this stage. I need have feelings of helplessness and vulnerability and asked a lot of what now, what ifs to God and why me? I didn't really know what would be coming my way felt uncertain and unsure.

• Depression is the fourth step. I suffered from depression from 2006 and finally went off the anti depressants in 2012 but in November 2013 had to go back on them due to low moods etc. I was frustrated about having to go back on them but now realise it was part of my MS as one of the symptoms is depression. So yes I suffer from depression but its part of the illness and not part of the grieving process. Though I did have periods of crying over being diagnosed and worrying over the future.

• Acceptance is the final step. And in my case it would be to accept that I have the illness, its part of my life, part of who I am, but it doesn't need to be my whole life. I need to accept I have it and carry on with life, which I have been doing. May not be able to do everything I have wanted to do or life will not be completely the same again but I am still living.

I started to begin the acceptance process on 30th June - am not sure am totally there, thought I was but my friend told me two weeks later that she thinks I have just partially accepted it, and when she said this, I agreed as yes I partially accepted my illness. Now need to fully accept.