People are individuals, and they have their one way of handling stressful situation and coping with grief. Each person react differently when they being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease and try to cope with it differently. Responses and reaction are dependent on various aspect such as individual coping skills, physical condition, emotional capabilities, age, nature of stressors, resources and information (Barkway, 2013). Confronting such a psychological stress has a prolonged impact on a one's physical, emotional, cognitive and behavioural well-being (Upton, 2010).
Physical responses depend on disease, stress and individual capabilities (Abraham, Conner, Jones, & O’Connor, 2008) .Physical symptoms like lack of energy, impaired appetite, losing weight, headache, diarrhoea, disturbed sleep and so on are result of disease. Physical sensations, such as a dry mouth, weakness, sweating, shivering, lump in the throat, tightness in the chest, shortness of breath, lack of energy, loss of coordination or irritation represent stress response (schulz,2015).
People express different range of emotions, such as anger, fear, sadness, in some case relief, when they facing stressful. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s five phase on “death and dying” focuses on emotional responses of dying patients (Schulz, 2015). The first stage of death and dying is denial and isolation. Most people are shocked and they could not believe that it really happening to them .some of them used defence mechanism and hide from the facts. Second stage is anger, in this stage patient are really very sensitive .Patient are angry with everyone who is in front of them, such as doctor, nurse, friends and family number, even stranger and they are very sensitive and feel betrayed(Gill,2012). Third stage is bargaining. Patients Bargain with medical staff, god, spouses, parents for less pain, more time. Patient things if they do something they can fix it and make it better. Forth stage is depression. Patient feels regret, worried, sad, hopeless, anxiety, loneliness, shock and relief. The last phase is acceptance. Patient may never see beyond anger or denial but some of them accept the reality and spent their rest of living life with their family or loved one(Schulz,2015).
An Individuals, who diagnosed with a poor prognosis like cancer or chronical illness are under the great pressure of emotional distress, grief, sadness, sorrow, fatigue, depression, relief, shock, anger, guilt, and anxiety and intense stress(Taylor,2012 ) Patients with advanced cancer experience fatigue, pain, loss of mobility, fully dependent and cognitive impairment, hair loss, weakness as the time goes on. Patient feels fear lost their past life, independence For example, patients may feel fear and anxiety about the long treatment, sadness and anger that they could not spend enough time with their family or that they would not able see the children grow Feel fear relate with long term treatment, guilt that they might have done something wrong in their life time that’s why they are diagnosis with this disease (Gross, 2013).
Cognitive response come with grief which include difficult organising thoughts, disbelief, confused feeling, preoccupation with deceased, which may bring intrusive thought of how the deceased died or the feel the presence of deceased still around (Gill, 2012). Sometime bereaved person go out of reality and cope with the loss .The bereaved person sometime hallucinate that the deceased person spiritual still presence around them which they found comforting and easy to cope with loss (Barkway, 2013).According to Kubler-Ross five stages of dying theory, the first stage is denial. People’s first cognitive response after diagnosis will be refuse to know the knowledge about disease, treatment process. They start to