The clinician might offer a prescription to keep a journal, practice meditation, or look through photograph albums. In accepting suffering, a patient can claim it, become familiar with it, and, potentially, overcome it by embracing it. Consideration of the end of life sometimes prompts patients to forgive or seek forgiveness from loved ones. This forgiveness can provide the patient with an unexpected positive outcome from the experience of illness and has even led some patients to describe their cancer as a gift. 20 Regret, guilt, and shame act as barriers to self acceptance.
Clinicians can offer to assist patients contemplating a reconciliation with an estranged loved one.
An acceptance of bad news allows patients to focus on the tasks of adjusting to their illness or on the tasks of dying, rather than fighting fruitlessly against inevitable death. Advance care planning encourages patients to make personal and legal arrangements for the time when they become sicker or die. Some patients at the end of life gain a sense of joy and completeness in distributing their possessions to loved ones. Achieving transformation Sometimes, illness, and loss may be transformative. Patients can respond to bad news by growing not merely stronger but fundamentally different.