Cancer is a personal disease, but everyone close to you suffers in some way. Cancer is especially hard on family members, particularly when you are in the hospital for an extended time. The period of separation can be traumatic.
Family caregivers are often very stressed. Everyone in the family wonders where you will be in a month or two months down the road—in the hospital, a nursing home, at home and needing nursing care? They are afraid you will have great discomfort or pain.
Very often, the family struggles with questions about how needs can be met and care arranged in such a way that insurance companies will pay for it. They wonder how other caregivers can become involved so they can get back to work. Relatives who live some distance away may have to make plans for taking care of their children so they can come and provide help for a few weeks or a month. Schedules may have to be rearranged, but people are often uncertain about when they should come.
And all members of the family have fears of losing someone who is an important part of the family's life, with meaning and value for love and companionship.
The Needs of Children When you are away in the hospital or when you are back home but feeling tired from treatment, it is not unusual for children to feel lost or neglected. You and other family members have to reassure them often that they are still loved. With younger children you may also have to quickly eliminate any notion that they somehow caused this illness.
