When Cancer Tests Bring Bad News
More Ways to Cope When a Loved One Is First Diagnosed with Cancer
Apr 24, 2008
Someone you love has been diagnosed with cancer. The second in a series of articles on how to cope while you wait to hear the prognosis and proposed treatments.
When you first hear the dreaded diagnosis ‘cancer’, you may feel helpless, confused and desperately frightened. Here are some more ways to handle this difficult time as you wait to hear what treatment the person you love will have to undergo.
- Thirty or forty years ago cancer was almost always a death sentence. Since then huge strides have been made in treatments, and for the majority of patients it is an unpleasant and inconvenient disease that is treated and they recover from. But for many people their fear is grounded in their childhood experience of cancer, and not in today’s reality.
- If your anxiety is getting out of hand, and you are dwelling on the worst possible outcome, try getting busy with all those tasks you have been avoiding. Take the newspapers to be recycled, clean out the cupboards, tackle the mending pile, and polish your shoes. Avoid doing anything to do with heavy machinery or electricity, as your stress may make you clumsy or distracted.
- Take offers of help. People want to do something to show they care at times like these. Let them. Take them up when they offer to take you out to lunch. New company, new surroundings and a change in conversation will recharge your emotional batteries. So will feeling loved, nurtured and pampered.
- Keep yourself groomed. It’s easy to forget about washing your hair, putting on lipstick and changing your clothes when it seems as though your life is crumbling. But the fact is that feeling dirty and unattractive can add an unnecessary layer to your distress. So wash your hair, put on clothes that make you feel good, and fake it till you make it.
- Now is not the time to make major changes. You might recognise that some things will have to change, but be careful about implementing changes slowly. Eg. If your children never eat vegetables, and their father has been diagnosed with colon cancer, you may be terrified that their poor diet will cause cancer in them too. But suddenly cracking down and forcing them to change their habits overnight will just bring unnecessary stress to the family. Once the most stressful period has passed, and the patient has begun treatment, you can slowly implement changes one at a time.
- Stop blaming yourself. Perhaps you picked a fight recently because your loved one complained of tiredness or discomfort, and you thought they were shirking their chores, looking for sympathy or making a fuss about nothing. Now that cancer has been diagnosed you feel guilty. Don’t blame yourself. If you had known they were ill you wouldn’t have done it. Beating yourself up about it now won’t help anyone. The best thing you can do for your family is to be as kind to yourself as you are to the patient.
You can read about more ways of coping when someone you love is first diagnosed with cancer in When Medical Tests Bring Bad News and Waiting for the Results of Medical Tests.
The copyright of the article When Cancer Tests Bring Bad News in Counseling is owned by Helen Brain. Permission to republish When Cancer Tests Bring Bad News in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
