Simple Ways to Support Someone During Their Cancer Fight

How do you support someone just diagnosed with cancer?

When someone you love gets diagnosed with cancer, you often wonder what you can do to help support them during such challenging times. The time between getting diagnosed to beginning treatment can range from a few weeks to a month or more. Knowing what to say or do to help support your loved one can be difficult, especially when their diagnosis and treatment plan is still unknown. As a recent cancer survivor, here are some simple and thoughtful ways to help and support someone during their cancer fight.

 1. Show Support on Treatment Days

Find out your friend or loved one’s treatment schedule and then work out a plan with other friends and family members to support them on their treatment days. Once treatment begins, it typically follows a predictable schedule. Chemotherapy is usually given in cycles over several months. A series of cycles is called a course of treatment. Understand how many treatments they will require per cycle for their course of treatment. For example, during my chemotherapy, one cycle equaled two treatments. I had two weeks off in between chemo sessions. In total, my course of treatment included three months of immunotherapy, followed by six cycles (or twelve treatments) of AVD chemotherapy. It’s important to note, people respond differently to chemo so they may need extra support for a few days following treatment. For instance, I often felt the worst on day four after a chemo infusion. Work out a plan with other friends and family to help support them during treatment and in between cycles. Can you help with childcare or rides to treatment? Friends and family can also show support at a distance by all wearing the same color shirt or socks on treatment days.  

2. Organize a Meal Train

Websites and apps like Meal Train,  TakeThemaMeal, or Give InKind make it easy to organize a meal train with friends and family members to support someone during their cancer fight. You can enter likes, dislikes, food allergies, make a wish list, fundraise, and list the best times to drop off meals. Shared virtual calendars help you coordinate meal deliveries, and you can also send gift cards to local restaurants or food delivery services like GrubHub, DoorDash or UberEats.

3. Offer House Cleaning Services 

A clean home is of the biggest ways to help support a friend or loved one during their cancer journey. You and other family and friends could take turns cleaning their house or helping with laundry during treatment. If you can’t physically help clean, consider buying a cleaning package or gift certificate from a local cleaning service in their area. Cleaning services like Molly Maid and Merry Maid offer gift certificates and have locations nationwide. Many cleaning services have recently partnered Cleaning For A Reason to provide discounted pricing and services for cancer patients in the United States and Canada.  

4. Help with Grass-Cutting/Yard Clean-Up

Offer to mow your friend or loved one’s grass or help tidy up their yard or garden. Helping out as much as once or twice a month can make a huge difference. If you’re unable to help physically, consider hiring a lawn care service to help them care for their home while they are in treatment. Paying for gutter-cleaning or one-time fall or spring-clean up services through sites like Groupon is another great way to help a friend or loved one with home maintenance during their cancer fight.

5. Decorate Their Home to Show Support

Consider surprising your loved one before they begin treatment or during treatment milestones by decorating their yard or the outside of their home with lights, signs, and balloons to show support. You can find a great assortment of yard signs and lights on Etsy and Amazon.

6. Organize a Drive-by Parade

Drive-by parades are a great way to show support and let your friend or loved one know they aren’t fighting cancer alone. Consider planning a parade to encourage them before their first treatment to celebrate reaching remission or their final treatment.

Supporting Cancer Fighters from a Distance:

 How can you help or support your friend or loved one through their treatment, especially when you’re not able to be with them?

1. Call and Text Regularly 

Knowing what you need when you’re fighting cancer can be difficult. Your feelings and needs often change as you go through treatment. Make sure to call or text your friend or loved one regularly to let them know you are thinking of them and wishing them well. Messaging them throughout their treatment can make a huge impact. Research shows prayer and a strong support system can greatly improve treatment outcomes.

2. Send a Card

Mail your friend or loved one a card or send a virtual greeting card to help brighten their day and lift their spirits. Knowing what to say or write to someone diagnosed with cancer can be difficult, but there are many great sites like Live Better With and Not Another Bunch of Flowers that have the perfect messages to uplift and inspire the fighter in your life. Soul Lite Cards will mail complimentary hand-made art or photo cards to your friend or loved one. You can contact Soul Light Cards through email, Instagram, or Facebook to receive a card or send one to a friend or family member.

3. Grocery Gift Cards & Meal Delivery Services 

One of the last things a cancer fighter should have to worry about is their meals or how they will pay for their family’s grocery bill. Consider sending a gift cards for a local grocery store or gifting a subscription to a grocery delivery service like Shipt, InstaCart, Thrive Market, or Fresh Direct.

4. Send a Care Package

While you can’t change your loved one’s diagnosis or treatment, you can do something to make that process a little more enjoyable, especially when they are facing chemotherapy. Chemo treatments can be long, tiring, and uncomfortable. By putting together a cancer care package, you can stand by your loved one going through treatment. Warm blankets and socks, lip balm, lotions, headwear, and personalized water bottles are wonderful items to include in a cancer care package. Organizations like Battle Cap Project, Warrior Bags, Tenaciously Teal, Lemons of Love, and Chemo Kits offer various care packages you can send a friend or loved one. Click here for a list of organizations currently providing free cancer care packages.   

5. Gift Streaming or Subscription Services

Chemotherapy sessions can typically last for hours. Some of my favorite things to do during treatment were to listen to audiobooks, read, or watch movies. Consider sending an Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, or Audible membership. Audible members can also easily send others books or credits to enjoy free audiobooks, even if the recipient is not a current Audible user.  

Knowing what to say to a friend or loved one diagnosed with cancer can be difficult, but it’s important to remember they will need continual support beyond their initial diagnosis. At the beginning of an illness, there tends to be a flood of support, and then it begins to trickle. It’s important to remember that the help is not just needed when a person is in the hospital or active treatment. The effects of cancer can last well into remission and long after treatment has ended. 

Remember that there are no rules when it comes to supporting your friend or loved one through cancer. Although you may feel uncomfortable or even scared, make sure to treat your friend or loved one the same way you treated them before the diagnosis. No matter how you reach out, whether it’s in person by phone, email, or text, what you say and how you say it—it’s important to reassure your friend or loved one they aren’t in this fight alone. 

Cancer Support & Care Package Organizations Quick Links:

Here are some great charitable organizations to check out for cancer care packages and more.

Cleaning For A Reason

Live Better With

Not Another Bunch of Flowers

Battle Cap Project

Soul Lite Cards

Lemons of Love

Chemo Kits

Tenaciously Teal

Warrior Bags

Give InKind

Learn more about my efforts to help support other cancer fighters through the Hopeful Warrior Project.

Visit my Resources page for more information to help support you or a loved one during their cancer journey.

Coping with Hair Loss

Coping with the hair loss and regrowth from my battle with Stage 3 Hodgkin Lymphoma never gets easier. But losing my hair has helped me appreciate all that I have and my capacity for regrowth.

“When is your hair gonna grow back mommy?”

I touch the ends of my growing bob and say,

“I think it’s getting pretty long, don’t you think?”

My daughter’s bright eyes start to dim as she shakes her head yes.

“But I like it the way it used to be…when it was longer,” she says. 

The truth is, my children see my hair as a sign of my health. 

The longer mom’s hair is, the healthier I am and the more my cancer treatment is becoming a distant memory. 

Although I’m now two years into my remission, dealing with the hair loss and coping with the awkward stages of hair regrowth never seems to get easier. 

My children have every right to miss the old mommy.

I still miss the old me. 

Sometimes I hardly recognize my own reflection.  

My hair is now shorter, darker. 

My body is covered with more scars. 

My hands sometimes struggle to grasp items or do simple tasks.

My mind constantly battles with the extreme fear of relapse and the hope of long-term remission.

Pain has become a familiar companion. 

But that pain has slowly led me to my purpose. 

The constant fear of not knowing what is next has made me all the more grateful for what I have in front of me and all around me right now. 

Sometimes the worst things that happen to us can set the stage for the best things that will ever happen to us. 

Sometimes the only way to truly understand something is to experience it for yourself. But with the right shift in perspective, I have found you can turn even the most difficult tests and circumstances into your biggest personal triumphs.

Learning to recognize the blessings in disguise that fill your life is an important part of healing. 

Cancer exposed all my weaknesses and my greatest fears, but it has also helped me discover my passions and live more purposefully too.    

Losing my hair allowed me to glimpse the parts of me I’ve tried so hard to ignore and keep hidden.

Losing my hair helped me realize who I am and who I hope to become.

Losing my hair helped me appreciate my own beauty despite my ever-changing appearance. 

Losing my hair gave me the confidence to bravely and authentically face the world.

Losing my hair helped me to be more comfortable in my own skin and get ready in record time. 

Losing my hair told me there is always a silver lining in a situation if you look hard enough. 

Losing my hair helped me realize, whether you are bald or blessed with beautiful flowing tresses—the length of our hair does not matter in the end.

Beauty can still be found when you’re feeling broken.

Growth is messy and recovery takes time. 

It’s often a mix of forward motion and then two steps backward. 

Yet, just as painstakingly slow as hair grows, progress is always being made whether we realize it or not. 

It’s usually only after we stop and look back that we realize just how far we’ve come. 

My journey with cancer and beyond has taught me that even the most negative moment can still lead to a positive outcome.   

 Looking at our losses as “blessings in disguise” allows us to see the underlying lessons when horrible and tragic events happen. When we view the awful things in our lives as teachers instead, we begin to see the situation in a new light.

 So the next time you find yourself in a bad, difficult or unfortunate situation, pause and ask yourself, “What is this trying to teach me?“

 I’ve found the moment we look for the lesson, the situation usually starts to resolve itself and we start to heal.

Tragic and difficult events often teach us to be grateful for our lives.

We tend to take life for granted, only to discover how magical and fragile it can be during times of crisis and loss. Looking for the blessings in disguise during difficult times helps develop our capacity for gratitude. While I never would have planned or hoped to lose my hair, looking back I now see I’ve gained far more than I’ve ever lost.

More posts on Coping with Hair Loss from Treatment:

Ponying Up: Copying with Hair Loss & Regrowth

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Battling Chemo Brain After Treatment

For decades, cancer survivors have experienced problems with memory, attention, and processing information months and even years after treatment. Because many of these survivors had chemotherapy, this has been called "chemo brain" or "chemo fog.” Early researchers assumed that cognitive problems were a result of chemotherapy alone. More recent research has suggested that the combination of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy, or even hormonal therapy alone, may cause cognitive change.

Source: National Cancer Institute

What do you do when you’re lost for words?

You know the feeling.

Maybe you’re desperately trying to make a point but can’t find the right word.

Maybe you’re trying to tell someone something but can’t remember an important name.

Maybe you were telling a story but lost your train of thought and now have no idea what you were saying.

Maybe it happens to you once or twice and you shrug it off.

But for those of us with chemo brain this is our daily reality.

Going through cancer affects your brain just as much as the rest of your body.

Maybe more.

Neurological issues are hard to pin down.

It can take years to identify the root cause of your problem.

You wonder is there really a problem with your memory or are you simply too stressed?

Maybe it’s both?

It’s hard to tell.

Cognitive effects of treatment can range from simply forgetting and extreme fatigue to difficultly multi-tasking. and staying organized.

It’s frustrating.

It’s embarrassing.

It’s not something cancer survivors always discuss.

But it’s our reality.

It’s a haunting effect of treatment that lasts years, even decades later.

Sometimes it never goes away.

But I’m here to say it CAN get better.

There is hope that these side effects don’t have to last forever.

The body is an amazing machine.

Our brains keep the engine running.

But just like any system, parts break down and become dysfunctional.

Sometimes things happen that send our systems into overdrive.

Other times, traumatic events happen that paralyze us and take away our ability to react.

So we freeze.

Our bodies go into shock.

Even years later, our bodies can react as if the event has just happened or is currently happening to us.

Traumatic events affect us all differently. 

There is no magic pill for treating trauma. 

You have to do the work to heal. 

Yes, our brains can become sick and break down,

Our bodies can feel so broken that we want to give up.

But I have also witnessed first-hand how they can be healed and rewired.

Functional medicine and neurological rehab helped give me my life back after treatment. 

After just a few months of therapy and lifestyle adjustments, I was amazed by my progress.

The underlying agitation and frustration that comes with constantly forgetting things was gone.

The uncertainty regarding my future was alleviated.

I could finally feel my body starting to heal.

I could visibly see the changes:

My vision improved.

My balance stabilized.

My strength was restored.

My digestion improved.

My anxiety lessened.

It wasn’t easy.

For a long time, I doubted it was even possible.

I thought I would have to get used to living this “new normal.”

Functional medicine, neurological rehab along with lifestyle and diet changes helped me regain a lot of cognitive function I thought I had lost due to my cancer treatment.

It isn't a total panacea for chemo brain.

But it’s a pretty good place to start.

I’ll be sharing tips and other resources in upcoming blogs and posts to help other survivors and their families get access to the same treatment options and resources that helped me. I was fortunate to regain a lot of my cognitive function in the first two years of remission thanks to the therapy I received. I am hoping to help others do the same.

 This is a big reason why I started my Hopeful Warrior Project.

Chemo brain affects up to 75 per cent of patients during treatment with 35 percent reporting symptoms post-treatment.

I am hoping to change that by helping connect local cancer fighters and survivors with the resources that have helped me the most.

Learn more: www.hopefulwarrior.com/project

Donate: www.fundly.com/the-hopeful-warrior-project

Sources:

Chemo Brain- American Cancer Society

A ‘new normal’ with chemo brain- Fiona ME Henderson, University of Derby

Neuro Rehab in the Chicago area: Neurologic Wellness Institute