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  • Writer's pictureDr. Beena Devi

Trash can

Updated: May 22, 2018



Spiritual pain can also be caused by having baggage or unfinished business. This can lead to anxiety and depression that manifests as complaints of feeling sick.

Bonita*, a 69 year old lady was undergoing treatment for metastatic breast cancer. During the third cycle of chemotherapy, she refused to have any more chemotherapy. To my surprise she turned up for the fourth cycle, saying she had changed her mind because her symptoms had reduced very much and she was feeling much better. She felt this was due to her treatment. She completed all her cycles with good improvement of her symptoms.

A month later she was back to tell me that she had a big quarrel with the family and felt very miserable about it. She would not divulge more. A week later the daughter came in and told me about the showdown at home. Her mother had asked to go to a private hospital to be investigated as she said she felt very sick. After all the investigations, the doctor in the private hospital concluded that there was nothing wrong and that she did not need admission. The symptoms which the daughter described were akin to that of extreme anxiety and depression. The daughter then confirmed that the mother had some unfinished business.


I suggested that the daughter, with the support of the family, prepare a checklist of this unfinished business with her mother and get her to drop each item on the list into an imaginary ‘trash can.' The daughter was thrilled and called this idea, ‘the celebration of thrashing the unfinished business.’


When cancer is diagnosed, the initial shock and emotional upheaval tends to settle down with time. However layers of other issues buried for years will surface. Some of these deep-seated issues are not easily resolved especially when the time to heal or to resolve them is limited. Often, we run a gamut of tests and when all appears to normal, we tend to assure the patient and family that all is fine. It may take more time to explore these uncharted areas but it is worth the effort.


*The names in all these stories have been changed and in no way reflect the actual patients.

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