Born 1926 in Switzerland, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross became an outstanding American psychiatrist. She studied medicine at the University of Zurich; from there she blindly went into the field of thanathology, the study of death and dying. In 1969 Kubler-Ross published her book "On Death and Dying." This clearly pointed to our lack of knowledge, and our inability to care for, the dying. Her influence "On Death and Dying" mapped out a five-stage framework/the stages of grief to explain the experience dying patients. Students studying for exams and test have often used the acronym DABDA, each letter represents one stage the dying patients move through.

The first "D" in DABDA, represents the stage of denial. Feelings of denial and isolation are normally short lived. Denial distorts one's reality to make them believe this can't be happening to them. They may often say, "This can't be true, you must be wrong!" When...