Episode 057: Caring for The Person with Cancer
Mar 20, 2019•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
I found out about Stan by reading his book and it really spoke to me because it covers all the difficult topics that come with talking to someone with cancer. Stan is a really deep thinker who uses his own cancer experience to distill his wisdom into practical ways of dealing with cancer. Here are some things that we cover today:
Dealing with the shock of being diagnosed with cancer
How to get the support you want
Different perspectives and dealing with reality of cancer
and much, much more!
Links
Stan Goldberg website and blog
"I Have Cancer": 48 Things To Do When You Hear Those Words by Stan Goldberg
Loving, Supporting, and Caring for the Cancer Patient: A Guide to Communication, Compassion, and Courage by Stan Goldberg
Full Transcript
Joe: Stan, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. I love your book: Loving, Supporting and Caring for the Cancer Patient. Tell me, how did that come about?
Stan: How did the book or how did my interest in cancer?
Joe: Both.
Stan: Okay. Well, I developed prostate cancer at 57. It wasn’t unexpected because my PSAs had been high, and the rectal exam always showed something that was not right within the gland. I always had suspected it. When it finally was diagnosed, it still came as a shock, as it does for almost anybody who gets a diagnosis of cancer. What I started experiencing were the kinds of reactions that I thought were odd from some people and were very genuine from others.
One of the things that kept coming up was when people heard I had cancer and that neither I nor the oncologist knew the outcome of it, was the standard phrase, which was, “I’m so sorry to hear that.” Then sometimes that was the end of the conversation. Other times, another statement followed, “What can I do to help?” Well, as I started talking to other people with cancer and counselling them, I found that what people said to me wasn’t unique.
That it was something that almost every person that I’d spoken to who’d cancer said, “Yes, you know, good friends will say, ‘I’m so sorry’, then there’s nothing afterwards.” What I wanted to do was, come up with a book for people who knew someone who had cancer. Essentially said, there are a lot of things you can do. There are a lot of things you can start by understanding what someone who has cancer goes through. Then there are different things that you can learn to do.
Instead of somebody saying, “Jeez, I’m so sorry to hear about what you’re going through”, to have them say, “I’m so sorry to hear what you’re going through and I know that it’s important for you to get out every day. Why don’t I come here tomorrow at ten, we’ll go for a walk?” It was in many ways as simple as that. That brought about the book.
Joe: Yes, fantastic. It sounds to me like, I think this comes from my own experience, that most people in your life, your friends, your family, they want to help, they genuinely want to be there for you, but they just don’t know how. We have to guide them. Would you agree with that?
Stan: Yes. I think it’s a two-point process. One is, yes, you need to guide them. The other thing is, what I found is, there are a lot of people that are so afraid of death and so afraid of cancer, that even though they want to help, it’s scary for them to do that. It’s almost as if I’m going to acknowledge that your life is finite and that I may lose you, what it says, I reflect back on myself.
If I’m okay with accepting death as a part of living, then I can go ahead, I can help you, I can do things that other people may see as impossible to do, in terms of healthcare and other things. If I am so afraid of dying, that to put myself in contact with you increases my fears, then that person needs to work on themselves before offering you help. Does that make sense?
Joe: Yes, absolutely.
