It’s always a difficult time for everyone when it comes to the diagnosis of serious illness, especially if they are the loved ones. Unsurprisingly, everyone would worry about how to talk to the patient as the patient mostly is overwhelmed both physically and emotionally, yet, the emotional support is high importance for them to get encouragement to fight the disease.
Here are things to do to help them:
Ask questions:
In the face of life-threatening, we could never know how they feel, what they want, and what we can do for them. If we make the assumption, it is a very high risk to worsen their situation instead of helping them. So, the best thing is to ask them for guidance on how they want to be helped.
Listen:
We want to help, so often we think about words we should say, but so many times, they just want someone they trust to listen about their feelings without judging them.
Support their decision:
One among the tasks of caregiver is to go with the patient to see the doctor and a patient mostly wants to hear caregiver’s thought. A caregiver should give them some thoughts, but the decision rest upon the patient since any decisions would impact only the patient’s body and mind.
Seek treatment information the patient in need:
It is about helping the patient to have more treatment options before making the best decisions. The caregiver can help find doctors to get second or more opinions which will give patient’s alter choices.
Seek an additional emotional counsellor or specialist:
During the treatment process, the additional side effect of treatment may increase stress to the patient, resulting in harder for patient managing difficult emotion. The counsellor or specialist should be mobilized to rescue the patient to overcome this stage.
Continuing supporting patient though treatment is over:
The end of a treatment session can be a hard time for a cancer patient as the patient still need consultations from doctor to ensure no cancer return. Their fear of what they just overcame may remain to give them hard times to manage their emotion, those stressful can stimulate the cancer cells to grow again
