October Rose - The Shock of Diagnosis

Every year in Brazil more than 55,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer. As much as medicine advances in treating the disease, with great chances of cure, it is difficult to dissociate the word cancer from others such as death, deprivation, long and painful treatments, mutilation, etc. The feeling of shock that most women who receive the definition of the diagnosis accompany is the first of a grief process that will accompany her and make her rethink her way of life and her life as a whole. < / p>

Grief is a set of reactions to a loss that involves a succession of sensations that merge and replace one another. Between the receipt of the news, the acceptance of the diagnosis and the beginning of treatment, there is a tsunami of sensations and thoughts that affect the woman. The shock of the news leads to inevitable doubts and questions: Am I going to die? Will the treatment work? Because with me? This is the moment of confrontation with reality and the perception of the finitude of life.

In the case of breast cancer, there are many possibilities of loss that lead to mourning: the possibility of death, the need to define the treatment where there may be mutilation of the body, compromising the body image; the limitations that the treatment will cause, the dependence on others, the feeling of not being aware of yourself, the fear of the future, the sadness that can become depression, etc. Regardless of the medical treatment chosen to cope with the disease, the path that CURE pursues as a real possibility is rarely easy to follow.

Facing cancer is both an individual and a collective task. Individual, when the person has the non-transferable mission of dealing with feelings such as fear, distress, hopelessness, sadness, etc .; and collective, when faced with this, will need to rely on a network of support, comfort and affection, to face the unknown treatment.

Seeking emotional help can be as important as medical treatment. Finding a space to “give words to pain” * can help you understand what's going on in your life, and with that make new connections with people, reevaluate existing ones, break up some and reinforce the ones that really matter. >

The human being depends on other people and is constituted through these relationships. It is capable of facing the greatest tragedies and reinventing itself before them. The beauty of the human is in his ability to resignify, renew, react all the time as long as possible.

Illness, cancer, can be the end of a life or the beginning of a new way of life. The reaction that points to life depends on how each person is constituted as personality, uniqueness, the support network in which he is inserted and the determination he will have to face reality.

“Give words to pain. When sadness loses its speech, it hisses at the heart, immediately setting off an explosion. ”Shakespeare - Macbeth.

Author: psychologist Ana Maria Dalagnese from CORA - CEFI's Grief Center