‘As a cancer patient, this is how I want you to help me’
WHEN a friend or family member is diagnosed with cancer it can be difficult to know what to say or how to help. Here’s the things that I most appreciated, write Tracey Lewis.
Rendezview
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“I DON’T really like to cook for my own children, so I’m not going to start cooking for yours!”
That was the honest, yet highly amusing message inside a card I received from a gorgeous friend when I was two months into my six-month chemo stint.
A few days earlier her first question to me was: “can you drink wine while you’re having chemotherapy?” When she sent me that text message I was sitting in a seminar room inside a hospital attending Chemo Wise talk about how to keep healthy during treatment. Coincidentally, that very question was one that we patients were asking the experts at that very moment. (For those wondering, the answer is yes, you can drink wine during chemo, but as you would expect, it’s all about moderation, so only one glass is recommended).
At school pick up the next day, this thoughtful friend handed me a gift bag with a bottle of wine and a card that contained a voucher for a local burger bar, which meant one more night my family and I didn’t have to worry about what on earth we were going to eat.
In the weeks and months following my first breast cancer diagnosis in 2014, flower deliveries were plentiful. They were divine and always put a smile on my face, but food … food made the whole house grin from ear to ear.
At the end of 2017 we were rocked again when, after months of being treated for what I thought was something like sciatica, scans revealed a tumour had turned up at the top of my left femur. Less than a week later I was under the care of an orthopaedic surgeon and having a full hip replacement. When cancer hits, it doesn’t miss!
From both these diagnoses there have been two rather unexpected outcomes: a heightened sense of responsibility, and a possibly over-exaggerated outside belief that I know more than I really do about cancer — and everything that fearful word conjures up.
The responsibility I feel is to do something with what I have learned and what I’ve experienced, to try to help those who follow, suffering in any way because of this insidious disease.
That belief that I know “stuff” means I quite often get asked questions by people who have a loved one, friend or colleague recently diagnosed with cancer. I don’t ever pretend to have all the answers, but I love that people feel they can ask me things.
My answers are always emotive and quite broad because every cancer diagnosis and journey (I sincerely detest that word) is different. There’s no mould. Not only is everyone’s circumstances — from their type of cancer to the treatment their teams prescribe — different, but so too are their reactions and the way they see their new world.
But for someone who writes for a living, I struggle to find the words to describe the love and support that has showered our family over the past three-and-a-half years. I came home from chemo one afternoon and my husband looked shattered. Not from worrying about me or how we were going to organise our lives around chemo week, but from answering the door to a flood of sincerely amazing friends who dropped in meal after meal after meal — from homemade pizzas to pasta and lunch box muffins. In essence, I was bullied in the most loving way possible.
Food, food and more food is one of the best ways you can support someone going through cancer. Whether it’s preparing or buying food for the patient or their family too, it’s one of the greatest, most useful things you can do. Eliminating the worry about trying to maintain some kind of health rating in your kitchen while dealing with cancer treatment is pure gold.
And it’s almost as good as listening. Just having someone listen to your concerns, fears or how alien-like you feel when you’ve got five drains coming out from your chest and ribs after reconstructive surgery makes the world of difference. You may not understand it, but you don’t have to. You just need to be there.
If you don’t know what to say, grab a voucher for a cafe or a movie so they can enjoy some time out from spending every second thinking about treatment or its side effects.
Take them wig shopping before their hair falls out! Be the one who answers the question “so, what kind of wig would you like?” with “she just wants to look like herself.”
Don’t be the person who asks if smoothies will help, or celebrate your friend now getting a ‘boob job’ (it’s anything but!). Don’t tell me I must have got cancer because I can ‘handle it.’ And don’t, under any circumstances, tell us a story about your brother’s wife’s cousin who had the same diagnosis and is ‘fixed’ now.
I was brought up to be independent, strong and capable of taking care of myself and my family. But the reality is sometimes you just need to learn how to accept help and say thank you. People want to help — be it the people you know well or others who have only just come into your life.
For so long I resisted accepting the help being offered. It was (and still is) hard to accept, but it has shown us the meaning of true love and friendship from close friends and those we don’t know so well. But there are so many things you can do to help someone diagnosed with cancer.
Breast Cancer Trials is hosting a live, free Q&A event at The Art Gallery of NSW on July 24 to take a look into the past, present and future of breast cancer research.