Anxiety or Fear

Advanced illness usually brings about changes in the household, as other family members are required to take on new and additional responsibilities. Families can feel threatened by the ill person’s absence in directing finances, household chores, or other tasks that they had routinely completed. If a parent is affected by illness, the remaining parent may feel as if they are already functioning as a single parent. Children may also feel anxious when dealing with changes in the household. It is important that children be given detailed information about who will take care of them and what changes they should expect in their day-to-day routines.

Please see Talking With Children.

Anxiety is also related to the uncertainty of how the illness will progress and when death might occur. Even health professionals who work with people with advanced illnesses on a daily basis can be surprised by the path an individual’s illness takes. Not knowing what might happen next is a considerable strain on family and friends. Some family members are afraid to leave the room in case the person dies while they are away. Conflicting emotions are felt when this same desire to stay with the person around the clock brings out feelings of resentment for having to do so.  

Take advantage of the support resources around you; your doctor, any counsellor or therapist you may have, the community social worker or home care nurse, or a private and regular debriefing with the  caregiving family and friends on the simple topic of changing roles and responsibilities, can ally some of these fears and anxieties.