Recently a staff member has been going through a very rough time. She asked me to share her experience because she knows as well as I do how grief can affect health and wanted our readers to know that you are not alone.
Her mother passed away after a brief but spirited battle with lung cancer. Just 14 months ago, she lost her father to prostate cancer. This is the same staff member who had a hysterectomy in May and so has had quite a lot of loss and anxiety to deal with.
After returning to work from taking 2 weeks away to help her sister care for their mother during her final days and to coordinate final arrangements, she shared some of her experiences.
“Night time is the worst, Christian,” she said to me. She wakes frequently through the night, as does her sister; with the urgency that something for her mother needs to be done…is it time for medicine? Do we change position? Blood pressure? Respirations?
Then she cries herself to sleep.
Caring for a loved one during the final days and hours of a battle with a terminal illness is one of the toughest things a person can do. Aside from the emotional toll, the stress that is created from the sorrow alone can cause a number of physical problems that then cause a cycle of misery.
Sleep disruptions and night panics lead to daytime fatigue and irritability, depression, and soaring blood pressure issues, which she reports are all occurring.
This is normal, unfortunately, and everything she is going through seems to be part of the “sandwich generation” problem of adult children caring for their parents while trying to manage their lives with spouses, their own children, jobs, and other responsibilities.
What she asked me to share are her methods to deal with the mounting stress and the efforts to mitigate the terrible health fallout that comes with this hard time.
Below are some of the items she is already doing and what we recommend for those of you also in this same situation:
– Talk to someone- It does you no good to bottle up what you are going through, especially when there are so many wonderful free resources out there. Find a bereavement group, an online group for survivors, or join a volunteer organization that works to combat the disease that took your loved one.
– Work on your sleep- There are many, many ways to make getting though the night a little easier. Natural products or programs are best because they don’t carry side effects and are generally less expensive than pills.
– Crush the anxiety that’s crushing you- Talking to someone qualified to help you sort out your grief helps you sleep better. Better sleep helps you manage daytime tasks without falling apart. Reducing daytime anxiety by listening to healing music or getting some sun on your skin helps with sleep. It is all related.
– If you are a spiritual person, go to your place of worship a few extra visits during this time, even if it is to simply sit quietly and meditate or pray in an empty sanctuary. Turning off the outside world in a place of spiritual empowerment is very effective.
While these ideas might seem like common sense, or even easier said than done, even improving in one of the negative emotional or physical areas will help to ease the sting that the others are causing.
The cycle of emotional grief causing physical problems, physical problems worsening the impact of grief and so on…this is something that you can minimize if you know where to look or can spare a few minutes a day researching it.
Fortunately, my friend and employee has a library of natural resources at her disposal, which she tells me have been helpful with her blood pressure, sleep problems and anxiety, but she also has access to a very supportive and highly qualified hospice bereavement group to help navigate the rough waters of grief.
She reports that she is working every day at keeping her blood pressure down and trying to carve out time to relax a little and says her sleep is getting better, although daytime is a little patchy still. She stressed that she knows that this, too, will ease as she gets some distance from these sad days.
If you are in a painful place in your life, our thoughts are with you, as well as our sincere best wishes that you can find some peace and strength. We are no strangers to pain and experience many of the same problems as our readers.
It is our sincere hope that by sharing our problems together that maybe we can help one another grow and heal.
El331005
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Dear Staff Member, thank you for sharing this. I am sorry for the loss of your parents.
This has helped me enormously, especially about the BP and night panics, I wont go into the stress in my life, but the night panics are so bad, one night I thought I was having a heart attack and called for am ambulance, but thank god all was fine, the hospital could find nothing, and put it down to my stress. My BP is under control but only through medication, HOWEVER, I am meditating daily, getting the treadmill every second day (that is all time allows) and doing my best with vitamins, minerals, herbs, good food, and time out.
Dear Christian,thankyou for this information it is so tue.I experienced all this three years ago when my Dear Mother was ill with liver cancer and passed away very quickly .I cared for her in her last 2 weeks of her life it was a priveledge to do so,time has helped me but i never forget those days. Thanking you ,Best Whishes and Good Health to you,Helen.
thanku i found it helpfull as ive just lost my parnter and finding every day hard.
Very helpful tips. I had my mother who was 85 at the time of her death, bedridden for 4 years and was looked after very well by my two sister. After she passed away they were not getting sleep during the night for sometime. During those difficult times they used to make it as if it is God sent opportunity to serve their mother.
It’s good to see an article that links grief, blood pressure and other physical ailments. I only wish more practitioners would understand this relationship and act accordingly.
I too recently had a storm of loss in my life. Grief is so powerful it changes the whole landscape of your world. Just like aging and death are culture sweeps it under the rug. People just want you to look right and to be ok. I think we need more ritual and acknowledgement of grief and it’s effects. I am so glad you are addressing the physical effects as they are potent.
Blessings,
Kristin Gearin
I liked your article. I found it very helpful to be with my friends
rather than taking grief counselling. Everyone is different. I believe I did my grieving before my husband died. He has been gone 6 years this April. I will always miss him. No one can replace him. I believe a lot make that mistake.
Evonne
Thank you for such a sensitive article. We are so interconnected as spiritual, physical and emotions and each area being out of sorts can impact the others. It was good to hear a pratitioner say they are connected and explain why . Not only that to give helpful suggestions. I look forward to your next article.
Dear Christian,
Thank you very much for your information. I manage my BP thru exercise and meditation as well as healthy foods, natural Vitamin C sources and lots of water.
By acknowledging our grief, we are enlightened. Maybe by serving our parents in their old age is like repaying them. I experienced that grief when my father died ten years ago.
Oh how I identified with this article. Thank you for the info.
I cared for my partner of 16 years during his final months when he returned from treatment for Liver Cancer in Hong Kong. It was a very stressful time but very rewarding to see his comfort and peace in his own home. It is a year next month since he died but I still miss him so much but with some wonderful help those symptoms you mentioned have eased a lot. My hardest thing to overcome was trying to go to sleep as I was with him when he died and gave him “permission”to do so. those images kept flashing through my mind every night but now I find them lessening and even comforting. Bron
Thanks for sharing your experience with us,grief is synonimous to death,i suffered so much during the death of my mum,she was completely down for almost one year at last when we thought the battle was over,she gave up.After a while i started having BP occassioned by all those stress i passed through.I think that in such a period in one’s life,the person should try and lean on GOD, that is the only solution.
It is very encouraging and comforting. I’ve lost my dad and my husband, both of whom I haven’t looked after well enough, particularly my husband. He seemed to have taken part of myself away as well. I’ve slept much less, partly becuase of aging and mainly because of grief. Tears simply quietly ‘leak’ from eyes, heart silently aches, constant prayers and meditation have helped keeping me in peace but the solitude is too strong to be done away with. Patience is much required. I recently start leanring something that both of us have never done in our life: driving, hoping that his spirit can be with me, being one, enjoying the mind-focusing; so far so good. The moment of driving has really brought me one more step to recovery.
Christian, thank you for this wonderful eye opener. To those who do not know, its going to be a guide for them to live their lives accordingly. we need more of these revelation from time to time.Keep it up.
I lost my 31year old daughter 17 weeks 6 days ago and we had an extremely close mother/daughter relationship as she was not married and had no children. My grief is so debilitating that I cannot sleep properly, my hair is falling out in handfuls, I cry all day with missing Bron. I am an avid reader, but now when I do read a book it takes 10 times the time and I have no idea what I have read. I am trying the meditation that always worked in the past, the searching of the inner spiritual side of me that has always been so strong for me is not helping at the moment, but I do know that down the track that that will come to the fore for me and help me get in touch with my Broni.
I would like to thank you for reminding me to watch my Blood Pressure because that has been a small issue for me in the past, but since my Broni passing my body health has been the last thing that I can think of so I have totally overlooked this physical side of my body and I know that she would be most concerned for me if I just let it go, so thank you and I will try to take more care of the physical side of things. I find that having places to write about the loss of my child helps, here for instance even though I do know that this not the place for it, it helps, so thank you for that too. Dru
The physical effects of grief are huge and go hand in hand with the emotional and phychological impacts. However these are very rarely acknowledged by society and medical professionals. My mun died 8 months ago which is still raw and extreamly painfull she had undergone treatment for breast cancer and was only 3 weeks post treatment when she got really ill and bed ridden and died less than 4 weeks later. Me and my sister are both suffering from blood pressure, sleep problems and lots anxiety and episodes of panic . when does it all change is there a time scale.
This has been a very tough year. My daughter had her twins at 26 weeks, being so very young, her little daughter died at five weeks old. Her other twin, my grandson, was in NICU for 113 days. We have all be grieving the loss of our darling granddaughter, while navigating the care of her brother. He is thriving at eleven months old, but now my mother;s body is shutting down and she has about a week of life left at best.
To help with my grieving work, I am part of The Compassionate Friends plus a grandmothers online group of women who have lost a grandchild. I stop in for a visit with these grammas one or two times a day. Sometimes I unburden myself. Sometimes I express sympathy or ideas for another. Often I do both. I always go away relieved of some part of the burden/
I found this article while doing an internet search, and am so thankful that I did. I was the primary decision-maker for my mom’s care for the last two months, and that ended in early June with her death, which I witnessed. I am now experiencing the high blood pressure, anxiety and sleeplessness described in the article. First, I am THANKFUL to know that some of this is common and will subside. I have seen my doctor and, together, we’ll get through this rough patch. Thanks again for a wonderful article.
Thank You for the article.My mother just passed away on thanksgiving.I am so full of grief. I have terrible dreams,I keep thinking of Her all alone in the cold cemetary.I am sick,phisically.My stomache hurts,I can’t breathe,I feel like I will be next.I can’t talk to anyone in My family,they tell Me to get over it.I can’t believe My brothers & sisters are so Harsh.They are more worried about what is here for them.I don’t know of any support group in My area.I am healing from a cancer operation myself.Now I am to weak to go to the store. But Your article helped Me to seeit’s the grief making Me ill. Thank You.