This Is What To Do If Your Family Is Affected By Cancer
A cancer diagnosis can rock a family to its core. But armed with knowledge, positivity and perseverance, a family can survive and even grow stronger through a cancer journey. It won’t be easy and it won’t be fun, but by supporting a family member with cancer, you can ease their burden and show them that they’re not in this alone.
Here are a few things you and your family can do if you’re faced with the cancer diagnosis of a loved one.
Learn What You Can
When your family member or loved one is first diagnosed with cancer, the information and emotion can be overwhelming. The timeline for treatment can move quickly, which makes understanding and absorbing doctors’ explanations and recommendations difficult. Especially in the beginning, learning all you can about your family member’s needs during their diagnosis and treatment can be helpful to you both.
By being informed, you can be preemptive and educated about the struggles that a loved one undergoing cancer treatment can face. Knowing is half the battle. But be careful not to indulge in information exclusively. Your loved one’s journey is their journey and no one else’s. They may experience things differently than others and blocking their reality with information you’ve researched on how things are supposed to be could leave them feeling isolated and misunderstood.
Listen To Your Loved One
Lost in the information from doctors, specialists, well-meaning friends and family and your own research, the voice of the patient can become hard to hear. Remember that each person’s cancer journey is their own, and that your role in your loved one’s life should reflect that.
According to the American Cancer Society, a person struggling with a cancer diagnosis can exhibit a variety of emotional changes, like anger, uncertainty, guilt and a disconnection from their friends and family. It’s important to expect uncertainty and listen to your loved one’s needs as they develop.
The temptation to relate to a cancer patient’s experience with your own is natural. Employing empathy might seem like a simple way to connect with your loved one and inspire hope and faith, but the Cancer Treatment Centers of America advise against it. Only your loved one knows how it feels to be in their unique situation. The Cancer Treatment Centers of America suggests swapping phrases like, “I know how you feel,” for the less presumptuous “I care about you and want to help.”
Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help
Help is what your family member fighting cancer needs from you, but that certainly doesn’t mean you aren’t deserving of help yourself. It takes a village to care for someone and you don’t have to shoulder the whole burden yourself.
“Many caregivers say that, looking back, they took too much on themselves,” according to the National Cancer Institute. “Or they wish they had asked for help from friends or family sooner.” You can ask for help. You can let go of some control. Some friends and family will be more than willing to pitch in with chores, cooking, cleaning, transportation, child care or just being a point of contact.
Take Care Of Yourself
Asking for help to support your loved one helps them, and so can taking care of yourself ultimately benefit them. Take care of yourself so you can take care of your family member. “You may feel that your needs aren’t important right now since you’re not the cancer patient,” the National Cancer Institute says. “Or that there’s no time left for yourself. You may be so used to taking care of someone else that it’s hard for you to change focus. But caring for your own needs, hopes and desires can give you the strength you need to carry on.”
With that strength, you can create the structure your family needs to survive being affected by cancer.