By Dr. Anthony Policastro

Any kind of loss elicits the stages of grief. Sometimes they are very brief. The stages are denial, anger, bargaining, mourning and acceptance. In most cases, we go through these very quickly and move on.

For example, if you are driving and someone cuts you off, your immediate reaction is “I can’t believe they did that” (denial). The next reaction is anger. Most people control their anger but road rage incidents occur often enough to show that some people are not very good at that. The third stage is bargaining. “If that hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have missed that traffic light.” Then we move on quickly to mourning and acceptance and move on with our trip.

I went to get my COVID shot last week. I had a 10 a.m. appointment. I checked in at 9:50. I waited with no further action occurring. I got back on the pharmacy line at 10:22. I got to the window at 10:33 and reminded them about the appointment. They were very apologetic that I had slipped through the cracks and took me back right away. Storming back to the window in an angry fashion would not have accomplished anything more than waiting in the line again did.

We currently face an issue with gas prices. We have gone through the “I can’t believe it” stage. Most people have moved on to anger.

In order to get to mourning and acceptance, we need to move through the bargaining stage. Fortunately, there are a lot of things that people can do to help ease the increased cost of gas. The key to doing that is knowing that it requires the individual to consciously make those changes. Complaining about prices without addressing them does not get them past the anger stage.

Fortunately, there are a lot of actions that are easy to take but they require planning. Some are easier than others. For example, taking heavy items out of the trunk will increase mileage. Perhaps there is winter gear that can now be removed. The same can be said about rarely used roof racks that add drag and decreased gas mileage.

Another one has to do with trip planning. If you drive to the Food Lion parking lot, you might visit several stores. You might stop at M&T Bank. You might grab lunch at Chick-Fil-A. You might visit Roses or Dollar General or Label Shopper before you go into Food Lion. You only need to park the car one time and walk to each location. Every time you start up the car again, you use more startup gasoline.

Combining errands is a related item. Even if you are going to several parking lots, you will save the fuel used driving to and from home by making it one trip rather than several. If you have two vehicles try to plan more trips in the one that uses less gasoline.

Perhaps the largest issue is driving habits. Coasting to red lights instead of braking at them saves fuel. Pulling away from a light without a jackrabbit start also does the same. Some insurance companies offer lower rates for individuals who drive that way.

The same can be said about speeding. We all know that speeding gets us there faster. However, we sometimes forget that the time we actually save is negligible. Driving consistently at a speed of 50 mph gets better gas mileage than doing 60 mph. In addition, even if the trip is 60 miles and you drive for an hour, you are only going to lose about 10 minutes. That 10 minutes decreases for shorter trips

The goal is to reach mourning and acceptance. You can achieve that goal more quickly if you pay attention to some of your habits. The good news is that if prices do go down, your changed habits will continue to save you money.

Whenever I see someone who is angry, my first thought is what loss have they suffered that is making them angry. In medicine, most medical conditions are associated with a variety of losses. The simplest is the loss of good health. It then extends to loss of time needed to take care of the medical problem. And there are other losses that we face as well. Dealing with the grief stages is important in those situations.

Addendum: medical phrase of the week – Toponymic Narcissism