The Effects of Grief on the Human Body

By Sheldon Cohen M.D. F.A.C.P.

The death of a loved one may cause severe emotional and physiological reactions up to and including death. The author, a practicing physician for forty years and married for sixty-one years, shares his personal experiences after the loss of his wifeexperiences that occurred even though his wifes death was not unexpected. Every person handles grief differently, but it is crucial to understand the basic principles of what may occur and learn how best to cope. This knowledge could save your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984515735

Sheldon Cohen M.D. F.A.C.P.

A graduate of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Sheldon Cohen has practiced internal medicine, served as a medical director of the Alexian Brothers Medical Center in Northwest Suburban Chicago, and served as the medical director of two managed care organizations: Cigna Health plan of Illinois and Humanicare Plus of Illinois. The author taught internal medicine and physical diagnosis to medical students from Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine and the Chicago Medical School. Recognizing the fact that busy physicians are pressed for time and thus often fail to capture a thorough medical history, the author developed one of the first computerized medical history systems for private practice and wrote a paper on his experience with 1500 patients who utilized the system. This was one of the early efforts in promoting electronic health records, a work in progress to this day. Serving as a consultant for Joint Commission Resources of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, the author did quality consultations at hospitals in the United States, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Copenhagen, Denmark, and served as a consultant to the Ministry of Health in Ukraine, assisting them in the development of a hospital accrediting body. Dr. Cohen is the author of 30 books. He was fortunate enough to go to a dance at the YMCA where he met Betty Lou Richards with whom he would spend sixty-five years before she died of natural causes. This book discusses the actual effects of grief on the author after the death of his wife of 61 years. It is a warning to be prepared for griefs potential serious effects. Understanding and preparation is the key.

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Copyright © 2018 by SHELDON COHEN M.D. F.A.C.P.

ISBN:                  Softcover                      978-1-9845-1574-2

                            eBook                           978-1-9845-1573-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 03/15/2018

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CONTENTS

Part 1 Betty And Sheldon’s Story

Chapter I     The Best Day Of My Life

Chapter 2     Courtship

Chapter 3     Family

Chapter 4     Courtship

Chapter 5     Off To The Military

Chapter 6     Finally…Private Practice

Chapter 7     The Next Fifty Two Years Post Completion Of Medical And Nurses Training

To The Reader

Part 2 Effects Of The Grief Reaction

Part 3 Hormones Nerves And Stress

I dedicate this book to

BETTY LOU,

Gail,

Paul, Marci,

Amanda, Shane, Megan, Travis, Carly, Alexa, Ethan, Emily,

Derek, Rylie, Benjamin,

PART 1

BETTY

AND

SHELDON’S

STORY

CHAPTER I

THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE

This book is difficult for me to write; difficult because it tells the story of a beautiful lady, my wife of sixty-one years who I knew for sixty-five years before she passed away. By beautiful I mean physically, emotionally, generously, sympathetically, lovingly etc. She was a paragon of good faith, universally loved by all. Her death affected me in ways that I never could have imagined. Why did I not comprehend a death’s impact on a loved one? I will never understand, but I should have, because I practiced medicine for forty years and such information should have been at my fingertips. Why did I not know what to expect? Her death was not sudden; rather it was expected as she had been ill for many years, but that did not assuage the remarkable extent to which I was impacted; an extent that remains with me to this day—a year after her death. The impact to me is a story worth telling, because death is with us on a daily basis, and the effects of a loved one’s death could impact anyone of us—and those effects could cause serious illness or death.

To best understand the impact of the death of a loved one, it behooves me to start from the very beginning when I first met the woman who would be with me all my adult life and who I loved dearly through thick and thin. I was and remain a very lucky man.

I’ll start with our backgrounds and our personal stories, but eventually zero in on the title of the book about Grief. Then I will discuss what happens physiologically and emotionally to one overcome by this stressful force.

Betty Lou Richards was born in Athol, Kansas. She was the oldest of three sisters and two brothers. The family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska where they took up what would be their last residence together. Betty’s father, a roofer, suffered from alcoholism which took his life in his mid-fifties after he and Betty’s mother were divorced. The family was very poor. Betty tells the story of at times having to pay the rent from her paper route salary as a ten year old.

In my case, my mother became psychiatrically ill and spent time in a psychiatric hospital. She was divorced from my father who was a hard working plumber. One of the saddest events in my mother’s life was the story she told me with tears in her eyes. She said, When I came home from the hospital, you didn’t know me. Of course, I was too young to understand the impact that had on her emotional health. From that time forward, starting from approximately age three, I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather.

Betty and I were two children of divorce in the days when divorce was a rare phenomenon. My mother, in spite of her psychiatric illness, worked as a legal secretary in an attorney’s office. The lawyer once said of her, She knows more than we do. Her psychiatric illness caused her to believe that she was contaminated, had lost her soul, and could never touch her family or be touched by them for fear of spreading her illness. She feared dying without a soul. Only her family members were the subjects of her fears.

Recently, I did research on the psychiatric hospital where my mother spent time. It was located in the western suburbs of Chicago. She was there during the days before any psychiatric medication had come on the medical scene. So what could be done? The answer is very little. My research on the hospital and the pictures I subsequently