When doctors tell you that your loved one is going to die, and they go as far as to say they probably have 2-5 years left, your mind follows the words and calculates the numbers. I was in a constant state of panic and anticipatory grief in the early days of my husband's ALS diagnosis and my brain conjured a countdown timer. The doctor had inadvertently planted future thinking into my brain. Thankfully, something happened a few years into our journey that snapped me back into reality, and that reality was that he was still alive.