Coping With Grief After Cancer
- Pop-punk band “The Story So Far” singer Parker Cannon, 32, says after his dad died after a years-long battle with throat cancer, he struggled with grief. Channeling his emotions into his music helped him cope with the grief.
- Losing a loved one to cancer is an incredibly emotional time that comes with grief. The grieving process comes in stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
- These labels help us frame and identify what we may be feeling, and these stages can occur in any order.
- New York-based clinical psychologist Dr. Marianna Strongin says it may be helpful to remind yourself that these feelings are “meaningful yet temporary.”
- HPV-related throat cancers are generally very responsive to a combination of radiation and chemotherapy treatments.
- The HPV vaccine, like Gardasil 9, offers protection against “nine HPV types” and creates an immune response to HPV 16, the primary cause of 92% of head and neck cancers.
“The Story So Far” singer Parker Cannon, 32, says the lyrics in the pop-punk band’s latest album were influenced partly by his father’s passing after a years-long battle with throat cancer. Parker admits he struggled with grief because his father was a source of inspiration for his music. “Grief was incredibly fresh for me in terms of writing,” Cannon
told Rolling Stone magazine.
Cannon was the vocalist for the band “The Story So Far.” The group has seen a few iterations over the years, but many music fans may know them for memorable hits, including “Empty Space,” “Nerve,” and “Upside Down.” Cannon says his dad always listened to the band’s music and gave much-appreciated feedback. “He was music to me…When he left, it was really difficult for me to push forward and do it again,” Cannon said. Losing a loved one to cancer is incredibly heart-wrenching, and coping with the loss takes time, as was the case for Cannon.
Helping You Cope with Grief
How to Cope After Losing a Loved One to Cancer
Grief looks different from person to person. For Cannon, he channeled some of his feelings through his music. The stages of
grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These labels help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. These stages can also occur in any order. The time it takes to navigate these stages can also vary, so it is essential to give yourself grace and patience while navigating your feelings. “It often gets better over time, but on certain days, it can look like depression, and on other days, people look perfectly normal and can function,”
Dr. Scott Irwin , a board-certified psychiatrist and Director of Supportive Care Services at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet. Dr. Irwin added that grieving people are coming to terms with “the change in their life; the future they had imagined is now different.”
SurvivorNet spoke with Megan Newcomer, who lost a close friend to metastatic cancer in 2018. She shared her unique way of coping with grief. Her friend was an athlete and soccer player, so to help her cope, she embarked on a marathon race in his honor. Newcomer advises others grieving to first “acknowledge your feelings.” “Then, think about a way that you could honor the person through a mechanism that is meaningful to you. So that can be artwork, music, or developing a financial fundraising project. It could be something very simple, but I do think having it be intentional is what you’re doing to help honor this person,” Newcomer adds. In a column for SurvivorNet, New York-based clinical psychologist
Dr. Marianna Strongin wrote that it may be helpful to remind yourself that these feelings are “meaningful yet temporary.” “If you approach them with compassion, kindness, and eventually acceptance, you will come away from this period in your life more connected to your resilience and strength,” she
wrote .
HPV-Related Head and Neck Cancers
“From the 1980s to the 2010s, the rate of HPV-related head and neck cancers has gone up by 300 percent,”
Dr. Ted Teknos , a head and neck cancer specialist and president and scientific director of University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio, told SurvivorNet during a previous interview. Though not all oral cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States, there is a link. RELATED:
Why the HPV Vaccine is so Important in Preventing Cancer WATCH: Understanding the Human papillomavirus. The vast majority of people in the U.S. will eventually get infected with HPV, according to
Dr. Allen Ho , a head and neck surgeon at Cedars-Sinai. “The important thing to know about HPV is that there are many different strains, and only a couple of them tend to be more cancer-inducing,” Dr. Ho previously told SurvivorNet during an interview. “Probably less than 1 percent of the population who get infected happen to have the cancer-causing virus that somehow their immune system fails to clear, and over 15 to 20 years it develops from a viral infection into a tumor and cancer.” While surgery is often required to remove the cancerous cells, other treatments include chemotherapy, radiation, and targeted drug therapies. If the cancer is advanced, some of these treatments can affect a patient’s ability to eat or speak, though it’s possible to regain those functions through rehabilitation therapy.
Protecting You Against HPV, Reducing Cancer Risk
The HPV vaccine is recommended to protect against HPV and HPV-related cancers.
WATCH: Should children get the HPV Vaccine? Gardasil 9 is an HPV vaccine that offers protection against “nine HPV types: the two low-risk HPV types that cause most genital warts, plus seven high-risk HPV types that cause most HPV-related cancer,” according to the National Cancer Institute. The vaccine creates an immune response to HPV 16, the primary cause of 92% of head and neck cancers.
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