The first, and certainly the heaviest, emotion that a woman experiences when told she has breast cancer is a fear of death. The implications are devastating.

If she has a husband, she wonders how he will get along without her. If she has kids, she asks herself what’s going to happen to them. If she is young and hasn’t had kids yet, or has never even been married, she wonders whether she will ever have children—or a husband—at all.

The next emotional wave that washes over her after diagnosis is a feeling of loss. She feels that her health, independence, and happiness have all been unfairly taken away from her. Her anxiety increases with all the delays involved in getting the medical test results back. Most acutely, she feels a loss of control over her life—that her destiny is in the hands of others.