When you have a family member or friend who is going through treatments you may think that when the chemo lines are removed or the radiation is done for the day that your loved one should feel back to normal. Reality is the treatment takes a lot out of you and it takes a while to get back to normal. The normal that cancer patients have may never be back to what it was before they heard the cancer diagnosis.
As I mentioned in a previous blog I was told that when you get the cancer diagnosis it is like walking through a door and once you get the diagnosis you can never go back to not being a cancer patient. You can never walk back through the door, back to being a person without cancer.
When a member of your family or a friend gets cancer one of the things that they will want the most is to be treated the same as you treated them before they got sick. I had some people who I would have considered friends and when they heard I had cancer they disappeared. If you are reading this you most likely are not going to do that to the people you care about but just know it does happen. It does not make sense why it happens; I mean you cannot catch cancer by knowing someone who has it. You cannot catch it from kissing, hugging or anything else. Cancer is not like an STD, the flu or strep.
If you care about someone going through cancer there are things that you can do that can help. I have written before about how to help someone through the diagnosis and treatment. You can find those links below. Now there are different things you can do depending on the age of the cancer patient. For me I was only 35 and I had 3 small kids I had a 3,4 and 7 year old at home and when I was doing the chemo it would have been great to have someone offer to take the kids for the weekend or even the day just so I could rest.
I had people bringing me food which was a great help for my husband but other than my mom and my sister no one ever took the kids for me on the weekends after my chemo. That weekend I was miserable, I got a shot called Neulasta which was to help build my white counts, but it also makes you hurt so bad. The pain from that shot is more pain than I can even explain. It makes your white blood count increase but when that happens it comes from your bone marrow. This shot makes your bone marrow increases that quickly, and that makes your bones feel like they are exploding. It would have been great to have had someone watch my kids for me at least that weekend.
I must admit although this may make me sound a little petty, it would have been great to have had my extended family to have watched the kid for me or at least to have offered. I would have appreciated having them understand that what we were going through was hard on everyone in our family. The cancer treatment is not a walk in the park and that more was needed from them. Of course I did not ask them to take the kids. I really did not think I would have to.
If you know someone who has the same situation make the offer if you can they will really appreciate that more than dinners.
How to help if someone you know is going through cancer treatments