Coping With Grief After Cancer
- “Dukes of Hazzard” actor John Schneider, 64, struggled to cope with grief after losing his wife to stage 4 breast cancer. After a year of grieving, he managed to find love with a widow who understood his struggle.
- John’s wife, Alicia Schneider, died at 53 following a years-long battle with breast cancer. Although she briefly reached remission, the cancer returned in early 2023.
- Losing a loved one to cancer is an incredibly emotional time. The grieving process can come in stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
- These labels help us frame and identify what we may be feeling, and these stages can occur in any order. Grief looks different for everybody.
- New York-based clinical psychologist Dr. Marianna Strongin says it may be helpful to remind yourself that these feelings are “meaningful yet temporary.”
“God sent a widower to a widow and a widow to a widower who gets it, who understands. Because I tell you what, I was ready to give it up, all of it – everything,” Schneider said on the Grace Begins Podcast.
Alicia was diagnosed with stage 4 (metastatic) HER2-negative breast cancer.
WATCH: Understanding treatment options for ‘HER2-low’ breast cancer.
HER2 is the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 protein found on the surface of most breast cancer cells. However, the levels of this protein can vary significantly from one patient to another.
Understanding a patient’s HER2 level can help doctors determine the best course of treatment.
The immunohistochemistry (IHC) test helps doctors determine the HER2 level.
A score of 0 indicates no protein expression (HER2-negative), while the highest score of +3 represents maximal expression.
Breast cancer cells with higher than normal levels of HER2 are called HER2-positive. About 15-20% of all breast tumors are HER2-positive. While they tend to grow faster, they are much more likely to respond to treatment with drugs that target the HER2 protein.
Tumors classified as HER2-negative may still have minimal HER2 expression, leading to the emergence of a new classification called HER2-low.
Schneider admittedly had a hard time coping with the grief after his wife passed away.
“The last thing I said to her was, ‘I love you desperately, and I’ve got multiple sets of very long-term plans for you,” Schneider told People Magazine.
While embracing his new love interest, Schneider says he thought he didn’t want to find love again, but finding the right person with a similar experience to his journey through grief was helpful.
“The notion that grief will ever go away is silly. Grief will never go away. It’s just something we learn to carry. And I’m learning,” he explained.
Helping You Cope With Grief and Cancer
- ‘Acknowledging the Grief’ – Losing Your Hair During Chemotherapy
- Dealing With Grief Related to Health Problems
- Tools To Navigate Grief And Shame: Dr. Marianna Strongin Addresses These Topics In Her New Column 'Strong In Cancer'
- Mental Health and Cancer — The Fight, Flight or Freeze Response
- Mental Health: Coping With Feelings of Anger
How to Cope After Losing a Loved One to Cancer
The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These labels help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. These stages can also occur in any order.
The time it takes to navigate these stages can also vary, so it is essential to give yourself grace and patience while navigating your feelings.
“It often gets better over time, but on certain days, it can look like depression, and on other days, people look perfectly normal and can function,” Dr. Scott Irwin, a board-certified psychiatrist and Director of Supportive Care Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet.
Dr. Irwin added that grieving people are coming to terms with “the change in their life; the future they had imagined is now different.”
WATCH: Coping With Feelings of Anger
SurvivorNet spoke with Megan Newcomer, who lost a close friend to metastatic cancer in 2018. She shared her unique way of coping with grief. Her friend was an athlete and soccer player, so to help her cope, she embarked on a marathon race in his honor.
Newcomer advises others grieving to first “acknowledge your feelings.”
“Think about a way that you could honor the person through a mechanism that is meaningful to you. So that can be artwork, music, or developing a financial fundraising project. It could be something very simple, but I think having it be intentional is what you’re doing to help honor this person,” Newcomer adds.
In a column for SurvivorNet, New York-based clinical psychologist Dr. Marianna Strongin wrote that it may be helpful to remind yourself that these feelings of grief are “meaningful yet temporary.”
“If you approach them with compassion, kindness, and eventually acceptance, you will come away from this period in your life more connected to your resilience and strength,” she wrote.
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