My Loved One Has Cancer

Keeping Friends and Family Up to Date About Your Loved One's Cancer

Communication is critical, yet it's hard to return each phone call and email. Here are resources to help you create private web pages that will keep everyone up-to-date, and allow everyone to participate -- and to post messages as well.

Care Pages are both free and private web pages that help friends and family keep in touch.. They are working on a guide right now to help you decide what to share and to help you communicate.

Lotsa Helping Hands is a simple way for friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors to assist loved ones in an easy-to-use, private group calendar, specificially designed for organizing helpers, so everyone can pitch in.

More things to consider when telling family and friends

Per my previous post, there's a lot more to telling people about your loved one's cancer than just personal style. Here are some things you should think about and talk about before you start telling friends and family:

* Defining how you want to tell them (phone, in person, email, asking other family members to help out)

* Defining ahead of time how much you tell them (remember, you're not always going to feel the way you do now, so think about how much, or little, specific detail you want to get in to! They're not going to be living in the cancer minutea you are!), and

* Defining if you want to ask them to tell anyone else (or keep this news to themselves). My husband felt it gave him freedom to be out of the cancer world for awhile by not having everyone know. You don't have to tell everyone if you don't want to!

For me, telling people also meant creating a team around me....to support both of us moving forward. Cancer isn't just about the diagnosis....it's really about what you're doing, and going to do about it. People take their cues from in how to respond to any news you give them. If you deal with it well, so will they.

And remember, telling people really does get easier over time!

Telling Friends and Family About Cancer: Different Approaches

My husband elected not to tell his friends or family about his cancer. His parents are elderly, and live out of state. His first concern was protecting them. He didn’t tell anyone else in his family because he didn’t want to have it get back to them.

My approach was a bit different….I told everyone close to me. I have a very small family, just my mother, brother, and a few cousins. And a half-dozen very close friends. With the exception of my brother, all live close by. It was important for me to tell them as I knew this was going to be a big chapter in our lives, and I knew I would learn something from each one of them in terms of support. And I did. Though no one had been through this experience, they knew me and they were very supportive. I got so many calls, emails, and offers of support, it really made all the difference in the world to me.

In retrospect, I think my husband’s not telling anyone was his way of saying “This is just another journey, I’m going to be fine and I don’t want anyone to worry about me”.

My decision to tell people was an extension of my need to reach out and get support. I was used to getting support from my husband, now I had to be the strong one. I didn’t want to burden him with my fears, I wanted to be there to listen to his. It helped me to talk about it with people that I cared about. It was very important for me to have sounding boards, and to ask for help and resources.