1. Support for the care givers.
Caregivers often have full-time jobs and other responsibilities and there is not a class on “how to care for your 30-something year-old daughter who has been diagnosed with cancer,” nor “How to reverse roles and care for your aging parent who up until this point has always cared for you.”
I already know y’all Facebook intellectuals will say there are classes related to that. What I’m saying is there is no class that can prepare you for your unique situation because your situation is tailored to YOU which inherently makes it different from everyone else’s.
There. Is. No. Class. For. That.
Caregivers are real life superheroes who just don’t wear capes. They trade their capes for silent tears, sleepless nights and mental fatigue. So buy them lunch, ask how they are doing (not just the person they are caring for), put gas in their car, and look them in the eyes and say, “thank you for what you do to care for…” This matters to us (the people they care for).
2. Skip the trinkets and donate dollars.
Instead of buying a t-shirt to show your support of say “breast cancer awareness,” take that perhaps $15 for the t-shirt you would have purchased and actually give it to someone fighting cancer. This is awareness on another level. And although $10-$15 may seem like a small amount to you, it is ENORMOUS to people like me.
For example, I pay $15 every single time I go to MD Anderson because I park in valet. I park in valet because, well, cancer sucks and even walking from the garage is an incredibly difficult task at times. The t-shirt will fade, but costs associated with cancer treatment never do for some people.
Someone literally sent me $10 via cash app while I was hospitalized and messaged me apologizing that it wasn’t more. I was like, “No, ma’am. I will not accept that apology and you are going to get all of these words of thanks because that $10 helped me purchase toiletries from the hospital gift shop that I desperately needed and didn’t want to ask my caregivers (otherwise known as the world’s best parents) to purchase.” This woman received the same thanks that I gave to a woman who sent me $150 and helped me fill my empty refrigerator with food after my hospital stay. They are BOTH angels who helped meet my needs.
3. Send a special message.
Record a video or voice recording of an encouraging thought or prayer INSTEAD of offering to come visit them in the hospital. If you want to visit, that’s cool. Just consider the following:
Being pumped with meds and speaking with multiple doctors, nurses, techs, etc. daily all while trying to maintain sanity is a feat in and of itself.
Hospital visits with someone who is wearing a gown designed to have their backside out can make the situation incredibly humiliating and awkward. I’m a G so I wear two hospital gowns to avoid this because unfortunately, I’m not new to this. But I didn’t know wearing two hospital gowns, one on my front and one on my back, was a thing when I was initially diagnosed. Doctors come when they can and it’s super awkward when they ask a patient in front of a visitor, “Would you like them to stay in here while I examine you?”
Fighting disease is exhausting and if you show up, generally, the person in the hospital will want to make YOU comfortable. An added, albeit self-imposed, burden they just don’t need that adds to the weight of their already difficult situation.
In the moments when the patient is alone, they can always go back to those videos and voice messages to reflect on the army rooting for them. This is like salve for the soul. TRUST ME!
4. Band together to financially support someone who is ill.
How you do it is up to YOU, but understand hospitals now encourage patients to use gofundme to help bear the costs of cancer treatment. I got receipts because I had this exact conversation while hospitalized this last go round for 15 days.
This is mind-boggling to me because it both highlights the medical industry’s awareness of insane medical costs in America, while handing off their responsibility to help with this crisis to the general public.
See what they did there?
And it is a crisis because unless you are wealthy, you are literally one catastrophic event away from being bankrupt (or coming close) due to medical treatment.
In America.
In 2.0.1.9.
So imagine “someone” (titles have been removed to protect the innocent…or is it the guil… oh nevermind) encouraging you to ask your friends and family, and complete strangers on the Internet to help you financially because, well…they won’t.
5. Show up for the kids.
This is simple. Send the children of someone battling illness a gift in the mail because who doesn’t like opening packages? And this is especially magical for kiddos. Or present them with a gift card to a (preferably healthy) restaurant or fun outing acknowledging that they, too, are affected by the disease. Grown children need love, too. So look back at point number one as a reference.
6. Pray hard and often.
Instead of commenting on a social media post or texting the words “I’m praying for you,” take that moment to actually pray. As a Christian woman, I got into the habit of saying “I’ll pray for you” without thought or follow through because it’s what I’m supposed to say right?
No more.
Now, I actually stop and pray and I literally tell people either:
A. I’m stopping to pray for you right now because this holds me accountable to actually do it
OR
B. I prayed for you.
That “I prayed for you” hits differently than a casual “I’ll be praying” when your life’s on the line.
7. Please, please, please under no circumstances say, “Well you don’t look sick.”
Y’all, I know people mean well, but I don’t know what that means. Like for real. Is there a measure for what sick should look like? Because I smile does that somehow negate that I’m sick? Just because I wear this situation well doesn’t mean it’s not H.E.A.V.Y.
I say this because when I am beating treated at a hospital that is touted as one of the world’s best cancer center’s and THEY tell me that I need to go to another state for treatment of my uncontrollable sudden onset nausea and vomiting that mysteriously started during cancer treatment,
OR
when I pose for the gram with my body balanced against something (like the case the astronaut is in behind me in the picture below) because I can barely stand upright without assistance and an unintended limp,
OR
when I simply miss the Texas state fair with my sweet kiddos for the FIRST time ever since my youngest was a toddler, I’m reminded very clearly that I am sick.
So instead say something like “You look great.” That “you don’t look sick” business, although well-intended, sometimes feels like a punch to the gut because I’m reminded every single day after six months of chemotherapy, two surgeries, six weeks of daily radiation (that left burn scars on my chest and breast), and monthly shots for the next 5-7 years that put me in menopause in my 30’s that I have been, and by many standards, am still sick.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.