MSI Press Blog

  When hospice arrived, they brought the usual equipment: the folder of forms, the quiet voices, and the hospital bed. The bed is always the centerpiece of their plan — adjustable, wipeable, railings ready, a machine built for decline. It’s meant to make caregiving easier, to prevent falls, to protect fragile skin. It’s the “right” thing, medically speaking. Carl took one look at it and refused. Not angrily. Not dramatically. Just a firm, quiet no . He would not lie in that bed. He would not be “that” person. Not yet. People talk about denial as if it’s a flaw, but I’ve come to see it differently. Denial can be a kind of dignity — a last boundary a person draws around their identity. For Carl, the hospital bed wasn’t a convenience. It was a symbol. A line in the sand. A declaration that the end had arrived. And he wasn’t ready to cross that line, even when his body was telling the truth more clearly than his words. So the hospital bed sat there, unused. A piece of medical ...

  There’s more hope these days when it comes to cancer—if it’s caught early, you’ve got a fighting chance. But people still die. Every year, every month, every day. Carl did. And recently, I stumbled across an article I wish had found its way to me before he died. It was written by Barbara Karnes, and it laid out something I hadn’t heard said quite so plainly before: “We die the way we live.” That line stopped me cold. Because she’s right—at least about Carl. He was an introvert to the core. Even after his diagnosis, there were no late-night heart-to-hearts, no raw confessions, no leaning into each other with the kind of aching honesty I craved. He simply couldn’t go there. And that silence—it wears on a caregiver. Carl was also an ostrich. I don’t say that with judgment. It’s just... true. All through our life together, I handled the hard stuff. He stayed sunny, cheerful, often by refusing to acknowledge the storm clouds altogether. Denial was his way of coping. It was how he kep...

  In her classic tome on death and dying, On Grief & Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief through the Five Stages of Loss , Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identifies five stages that those faced with shocking news associated with loss or potential loss go through: Denial (avoidance, confusion, elation, shock, fear) Anger (frustration, irritation, anxiety) Bargaining (struggling to find meaning, reaching out to others, telling one's story) Depression (overwhelmed, helplessness, hostility, fight) Acceptance (exploring options, new plan in place, moving on) Th subsequent works by Kubler-Ross, including those with colleagues, as well as works by others building on her research have pretty much confirmed these stages. How long it takes to go through any one of them depends upon the individual. Future Cancer Diary posts will dive deeper and personally into these stages. Grief is a complex and highly individual topic and intrinsically intertwined with cancer. MSI has published some helpful w...