Paige Barnes

     I had an epiphany a few weeks ago. It just hit me out of the blue while driving down the road. The  Kübler-Ross  stages of grief and the fact that if you have a child with a chronic illness you never complete the cycle. The theory behind the stages of grief is that a person will usually cycle through the stages during a time of intense grief, maybe even visiting some more than once, and eventually coming to the acceptance stage where the cycle will end. As a nurse, we are taught about the stages and how the normal human psyche responds in each stage. We are taught how to deal with patients and their families in each stage, how to help them cope and move through the stages until they reach the acceptance stage.  My nursing education did not prepare me for having a child with a chronic illness. I have found myself in all of the stages, over and over, for four years. Here are the stages: Denial - even now, when my son has many days in a ...