A nurse is caring for four clients. Which of the following clients should the nurse expect to experience anticipatory grief?

Anticipatory grief is the process of mourning a loss that has not yet occurred but is expected. It involves working through grief emotions — sadness, anger, bargaining, and acceptance — before the actual loss happens. A client newly diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer is facing an anticipated death and is therefore the classic candidate for anticipatory grief. The client may grieve the impending loss of life, roles, relationships, and bodily function before the death actually takes place. A client whose son committed suicide is experiencing acute grief over a loss that has already occurred, not an anticipated one. A client who has given up a child for adoption has also already experienced that loss; any grief is reactive rather than anticipatory. A client who experiences a traumatic amputation has sustained a sudden, unexpected loss that is already complete at the time of the encounter — this represents acute or complicated grief, not anticipatory grief. The defining feature of anticipatory grief is that the major loss is forthcoming but not yet fully realized, which uniquely applies to the client facing terminal metastatic cancer.