“The thing is, having cancer is isolating. When a person gets cancer, people dont know what to say, so oftentimes they will apologize, or because they dont know what to say they will say nothing at all.
-K. Seeley
Having cancer is hard. It’s isolating. Being in the hospital for long periods of time, getting medications that make you sick, and being taken care of by strangers who become family. It’s all hard people.”
The quote above is from something my daughter wrote at some point, during her seven year battle with leukemia. I came across it awhile back and having been both caregiver and cancer patient myself, I can tell you there’s a sad truth in it. Cancer is very isolating. And not only for the person with cancer oftentimes. The whole family is affected when one person has cancer, let alone in our case, with two people.
Cancer is isolating for the whole family. This appears in different ways. One, a lot of time is spent in doctors offices and hospitals. That can not only separate the family from their regular lives and activities, but it can also cause them to be separated from each other. Like when there are little kids involved. The doctors are not overly fond of having little kids around during the process, and so whenever possible the kids get shuffled around to whoever is available to watch them that day. Thankfully for me, the first year that I was diagnosed, my sister was living with me for a little while and was able to be there to stay with my kids sometimes.
Two, cancer is exhausting. For the patient and for the family. There is all this running around to appointments and visiting in the hospital. Then running home, trying to do everything that you need to do while trying to maintain the house at a level of the germs won’t kill anybody. Trying to make time for the people who live with you so they don’t feel completely forgotten, isolated and depressed.
Three, cancer is scary. It’s really hard to not be worried about everything all of the time. You end up trying to hold onto soo much information in your brain, and you are absolutely fried. You are lucky to have matching shoes on your feet most of the time. Trying to know what is going on in the world outside of your house and the hospital is beyond your brains ability to keep up. Goodness, I am tired just thinking about it.
But my point is, is that cancer is exhausting and isolating for the entire family. At least it was for our family. Although I will say, it’s kind of interesting that Kate felt so isolated, because she really had way more attention and support than any of the rest of us could have hoped for. She had two precious friends locally who would take her and do things with her on a semi regular basis. She had people that messaged her and called her to see how she was doing. Whenever the rest of us went anywhere and saw people who knew her, they were always asking how she was, and saying that they were praying for her kind of thing. Even when she was in Texas, and I was getting chemo and literally had no hair, people would still ask how she was doing, but not ask anyone else how they were doing. I remember our teenage daughter commenting about when she came to church with us. She wasn’t there with us very often at that point, but when she was, people would ask her how Kate was doing and then go on their merry little way and not ask how she was handling the fact that both her sister and her stepmother had been battling cancer. Let alone just ask her how SHE was doing in life.
A cancer patient’s families are not just vessels to answer questions about the person with cancer. They are real people too. People who are hurting and scared and tired and overwhelmed. They need love too. It’s hard being in a situation that no one around you can possibly understand. It’s even harder being in that position and having no one to talk to. No one to just tell your fears to or just talk to so that you can feel seen for just a moment.
Cancer patients and families dont expect you to fix their problems. We know you cant. But sometimes the words just get all stuck up inside and make us feel like we are a bomb, one that is only just one tremor from detonating.
If you are a part of a family going through cancer, know that my heart goes out to you. I know how hard that struggle can be. How isolating and exhausting it is. Keep hanging in there. One day, this too shall pass.
If you know a family going through cancer, I hope that this post helps you to better understand some of the things that the family may be struggling with and how you may be able to better be there for them. If you getting nothing else out of this post, I hope you get how important it is to realize that cancer affects the whole family or household, not just the one with the diagnosis. When you stop to ask how the person with cancer is, don’t forget the parent, sibling, caregiver, ect. that may be standing in front of you. They need a little love too.
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