That time and a Sunday where we chat to extraordinary Australians. Well, as we say, ordinary Australians doing extraordinary things. And today we're talking to Sue Woodhall. Now, Sue was in her late fifties. She was a high flyer in the public service, holding a senior position. It looked as though nothing would stop her. Then one day along comes that awful breast cancer.
She tried to negotiate pathway back to work after going through treatment and the like, but as a full extent of well symptoms following treatment became clear, those hopes seemingly disappeared. Eventually her employer made it clear that they couldn't hold the role open. Now, what she decided then, and this is what makes the people we speak to at this time on a Sunday so remarkable. What she wanted to do was to say this doesn't happen to anyone else.
So she founded the ad Vicausey Group Live Work Cancer, a Britain organization supporting those negotiating their entry and exit from work around their diagnosis, while pushing businesses to show compassion to employees battling cancer. Let's find out more about the work and life of Sue. What all I'm delighted to say is on the line. Good morning, so thank you so much for your time. How's your health? I have to start there.
Well, firstly, good morning, Luke, and thank you for the opportunity to chat with you this morning. Asolutely my health, well, it's good. I feel that cancer is not in my body, but we don't really know. We never really know. But I'm coming up from our fifth anniversary next month, so brilliant. I'm in a good place and I'm doing something that I'm really passionate about.
Believe in it.
I've got both a lived experience but the understanding from so much research into this area of when cancer arrives when we're working.
This is again full credit to you. Firstly, I'm delighted to know that you're coming up to five years but turning into what was such a negative outcome in your life to turn it into what you're doing now is brilliant. So I'll remind people at the end of our chat to go to livework cancer dot com. Tell me what happened to your career if you can. How did you find yourself in the position where the career was just about done?
Yeah, I guess, Luke. It starts with.
Firstly the diagnosis, and then I've got a treatment plan from the oncologist which said two and a half years of at what they call active treatment, and then another sort of five to seven years of treatment because of the type of breast cancer I had. And so after you know, a couple of surgeries, five months of chemo radiation therapy and the first lot of the called targeted therapies, I felt that, yeah, twelve months I could probably start
to consider returning to work. So developed a return to work plan which really needed to consider all of the side effects and some of the challenges for not just our buddies at work, but also our families, our friends to understand the real impact that the treatment imposes on us. And many of these are invisible.
So the three that.
I'll talk about this morning that probably made it very difficult in terms of just switching from not working to going back to work was what they call brain fog or chemo chemo brain. The technical term is cancer related cognitive impairment. Yes, and that basically I couldn't think I was one of the fortunate ones because I had income protection, but I couldn't fill up the income protection forms.
So can I ask you this might be such a stupid question, Sue, but did you know could you understand what was going on? Was the impairment your ability not to complete the form or were you completely unattached from a sense of reality if.
You will, Well, yeah, I like, you know, put your name here, your first name and then your second name. I couldn't get that right. I couldn't get the address in the right boxes. So what happens is and it doesn't happen to everyone that has chemo, and it depends on the type of chemo, and there's many different types. But for some of us, the chain in our cognition, our executive functioning is real, and it was.
One of the side effects I had absolutely no idea about.
I did expect the second one, which was fatigue and that sort of you do nothing in the day and you're exhausted, But the cognition issues were really front and center. So when I was thinking about returning to work, you know, I had to explain that meeting with ministers, meeting with secretaries, you.
Know, fronting up.
It was an audience of very senior public servants or suppliers or whomever. I wouldn't be able to do that. I wouldn't be able to do it to the same level that I could do before my diagnosis. And it was a shock to me, and I think it was a learning for those around me, both at work and also in my friends and my family.
And I was talking to a researcher who does a lot.
Of work around cancer related cognitive impairment, Darren Haywood, and sort of said, well, why don't why don't we get told about this? And it's a really you know, it's a really important question that's we don't want to sort of frighten everyone. Say, well, if you have chemo, you may, you know, you may, your brain might sort of stop working.
But the having the conversations with your cancer nurse, you're oncologist, your psychologist, they help you to understand that what you're experiencing is real and and also it's not You're not unique.
You know, on one on one level, if a doctor's brave enough, well a doctor's not brave enough. But if doctor fronts you with the confronting news that they have discovered a tumor, then you would imagine that, I mean, if that's tough enough, But what follows should be the tough conversation about it just worries me that we say, oh, you know, it's a bit difficult to talk about and no you're not saying that, but you know this is not You can't just have certain aspects of the illness
and the treatment. This is a whole box and dice. So what I what I want to understand to is in your workplace or with your employer, because you sound perfectly like the sort of person would say, well, if I've got a cognitive impairment, I can't be expected to make, you know, very big decisions. Well what do we want our employers to do? What? Where? Do they kind of miss the boat because it's equally wrong to say, well, sorry, you can't work anymore.
Yes, yeah, look there's a few things. And let me say the outset that when I realized the impact on my work and then the inability, we tried to get a pathway back from me, but it.
Just didn't didn't happen. Wasn't possible. They did their best.
But once I started to get a bit of cognition back and I started to read some of the research, I then was able to walk in my boss's shoes, and I had been a leader and manager for many decades, and I felt that if I had been leading managing Sue, how would I have actually responded? And that was one of the AHA moments to set up Live Work Cancer. Because it's not my boss's fault, it's not even I mean,
it's no one's fault. What we need is better advocacy and awareness of what are cancer experiences like, and that answers to answer your question, Luke, I mean, the first thing is don't make assumptions about what your friend, your colleague, your family members going to go through because there's so many different there's over one hundred different types of cancer.
There's many many different subtypes. And if you make the assumption that I've got breast cancer, so my colleague who's just been diagnosed with breast cancer is going to go through the same experience, that's the first mistake. That's the first trip.
And so it's.
About understanding that cancer and its treatment and how our body responds.
To all that treatment, that it is truly unique.
So what workplaces need to do firstly to start the conversation about cant in the workplace because fifty percent of us, unfortunately will be will experience cancer, and somewhere around forty percent will be working when they're here their.
Words, you've got cancer. So yeah.
And then since two thousand, the number of people with that are diagnosed with cancer has nearly doubled. So it's a growing issue. It's a growing health condition, and we need to become more understanding and have greater awareness.
The other thing that's really important.
Luke, is to have flexible guidelines for managers and give the manager the ability to adapt them to the unique needs of each colleague. So it's not about you know, it's this way or the highway. It's sort of saying, Sue, well, she's told me that her executive functioning or her brain's not working as it used to, so we're probably going to need some different accommodations. But for somebody else, Joe, for example, he's had a chemo, but his brain's working well, he tells me.
That he's not.
He's he understands his capacity, he understands his capability, so we can continue to get him back into a similar role, etc. The other thing that's really important is training training manager and leaders how to respond with compassion, not just empathy. Empathy and action. That's what compassion is, so that they're trained and prepared for the person that comes in and says they've got cancer. And workplaces have made some amazing inroads into support for people with mental health.
Absolutely, she's absolutely.
And now I think most workplaces have really solid parental supportive environments, safe work environments. But when we're talking about a chronic illness, we lack the training and we lack the I guess what we call reasonable adjustments inside the workplace.
Yeah, I think I think there's I think there's a lot to that workplaces have made enormous grounds. I mean I'm looking at the workplace I'm in at nine Radio and compared to the cup that I worked for the same organization, you know, maybe five years ago, the strides made in you know, HR for example and elsewhere is remarkable. Who should go to livework cancer dot Com?
So okay, so firstly, anyone that's trying to balance work in cancer. So we provide one on one coaching to help them determine what their goals are. You know, do they want to go back to work? Do they want to do they feel that they've got the ability to go.
Back to work?
How do they want to go back to work, what are they worried about? So that coaching at one on one. We've set up network groups. Now at this stage it's only for women. Men tend not to like to come into a support group environment. But if the men say otherwise and they want to participate paid in a network group, we will set one of those up again. And then we go to the workplaces. And that's a combination of just you know, having a one hour forty minute conversation
with the workplace like an all staff meeting. This is what the cancer experience can look like. This is what the research tells us, this is what you might be able to consider and then help them with their their strategies, their policies.
Well, if I look wagen intervene here and I know, I know the station manager of this place is listening. Greg, this sounds like a master, it seems to me. So I have to go. But gosh, I've learned so much talking with you. I wish you'd continued good health, and thank you for what you're doing for people who have had their battles or will have their battles. It's so very.
Important, so great. Thanks, Thanks for not.
At all or sue what all and again the website is lipworkcancer dot com. Where would we be with our people like zooh hashtagre saying