As a caregiver, you'll feel thrilled when a course of treatment is finished, but your loved one's feelings are likely to be much more mixed. During treatment, she's taking action. That can be empowering because the focus is on a solution, either a cure or progress in pushing back the cancer. When treatment is finished, it can feel like there's nothing more for the patient to do but wait, and naturally she may feel anxious and uncertain. "Often, people don't feel like celebrating. Instead they think, 'Now what do I do? Just wait for the cancer to come back?'" says Knajdl.
No matter how relieved you are, try to keep it to yourself. "It's really common to say something like, 'Boy, am I glad that's over,' but that implies two things: that the treatment has been a burden on you, and that you want her to be happy about it when maybe she's not feeling happy," Knajdl says.
What to say instead: Give her a chance to express how she's feeling. Try asking an open-ended question, such as, "How are you feeling now that you're finishing up the chemo?" This way, you allow her to control the response. She might say, "I know we were talking about throwing a party when I finished chemo, but I really don't feel like it." The bottom line is, whatever she's feeling is okay, and your job is to make it clear you're ready to listen.
Resources
Websites
The American Cancer Society Cancer Survivors Network has lots of resources about how to talk to someone with cancer.
People Living With Cancer has a helpful section on talking about cancer.
Books
Cancer Etiquette: What to Say, What to Do When Someone You Know or Love Has Cancer, by Rosanne Kalick, (Lion Books, 2005).
Help Me Live: 20 Things People with Cancer Want You to Know, by Lori Hope (Celestial Arts, 2005).
Other resources
Guided visualization tapes are available from the Healing Mind, created by Martin Rossman, MD, one of the pioneers of this mind-body technique.
