Episode 032: Getting The Support You Want From People You Care About
Aug 26, 2018•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
When it comes to friends and family supporting you during cancer, it’s a tricky balance to maintain: on one hand, you don’t want to Impose or come off like you can’t handle it, but then again you want to let them in and help because they want to be there for you, but they don’t know how. Today I’m talking to Rachael who went through cancer herself and created a solution a mobile app that can break those barriers and make it easy for people in your life to help out and for you to get the support you want, on your terms. Here are some things we cover today:
How diagnosis turns your world upside down
The hidden struggles of living through cancer
The biggest challenge behind asking for help
How CanDo helps you get the support you want
and much, much more!
Links
CanDo app
Garvan Institute of Medical Research
Episode 023: Getting The Support You Need, On Your Terms
Full Transcript
Joe: Hey, Rachael, I love your app. I must admit, I was thinking about this before, a way of getting people to support you on your terms. I think this is so fantastic.
Rachael: Yes, thank you. It’s been a labour of love to get to this point. There are lots of plans for the future, as well, so it’s been a big deal, a lot of work.
Joe: Yes, I can only imagine. Yes, I was talking to Ben Smith from the University of New South Wales, that’s when he told me about it. I was like, wow, that’s exactly what we need.
Rachael: Yes, well, I’ve been lucky enough to get a lot of support from most of the big main cancer organisations. They all recognised the need for it. I think a lot of them just either don’t have the money to do it or it’s not their culture to get those things done. Yes, there are lots of plans for the future to make it bigger and better and all that kind of stuff, but it’s been great for me, as well.
Joe: Fantastic. Rachael, I want to take a moment to go back in time in a time-machine to a time before cancer. What was life like before? What was life like then?
Rachael: I had a pretty senior job in an advertising agency. I have a 25-year background in advertising. I had just taken on a pretty big job. Had a brand-new mortgage on my first apartment, single, living in Sydney and having a lot of fun. It was a Saturday morning when I accidentally found quite a large lump in my right breast. You instantly feel the other side because you want to feel if it’s symmetrical, because you think if it’s symmetrical, maybe it’s something that’s supposed to be there.
It was on the underside then I thought it might be something attached to my ribs. It wasn’t symmetrical, so I was pretty quick to go to my GP. Maybe two or three days later. She had a look at it and the first thing she said, I remember every word, she said, “I don’t like it.” Then went into a week of scans and ultrasounds and biopsies and things like that from that point on. Just trucking along in life and everything is normal and doing normal things, then all of a sudden, literally, your world turns upside down in an instant.
Joe: Yes, it’s crazy, isn’t it? I remember when I found out, those words are kind of etched into your mind. What was it like for you? What were your first thoughts when you got your diagnosis?
Rachael: Well, the diagnosis was kind of a staggered process. When I went to have my mammogram and ultrasound, and it was the week before Christmas, so I remember the doctor, she was great. She called around to try and find somewhere that could actually take me the week before Christmas, because they’re usually really busy in that time because they’re about to close down for the couple of weeks. The radiologist had stopped talking to me, or the radiographer had stopped talking to me.
My sister had cancer, so my sister had a rare form of sarcoma called: Synovial Sarcoma.
