Know 'Your Crew': Match Tasks to Talents for Your Wellbeing (chase away reluctance to accept or ask for help)

Feeling like you're alone is an awful feeling.  Jill shares useful ideas on how asking for and accepting help can be so much easier. 

Your Crew' represents the group of people able to offer support. By matching the talents of individual crew members with specific tasks, everyone benefits. Your crew members feel fulfilled using their skills effectively, and you experience relief by having burdens eased.

One of the biggest hurdles in a cancer journey can be the reluctance to ask for or accept help. Set aside this hesitancy and prioritize your well-being. Start today by allowing yourself to accept the support that is available to you.

Whether it’s sorting through complex information handed out by healthcare providers, maintaining a part of your garden, organizing a room, or researching treatment options—there are countless ways your crew can assist. Leverage their skills to make your daily life and decision-making process smoother and more manageable.

Having a trusted crew member by your side during medical appointments can be invaluable. They can help ensure you ask the right questions, understand the information provided, and offer moral support during those tough conversations.

By understanding the potential of your support network and actively engaging with them, you can significantly decrease your stress and enhance your well-being.
 #CancerJourney #Wellbeing #Cancer #CancerCare #SelfAdvocacy #SupportSystem

Slower

Transcript

Jill: Welcome to the Everything Cancer podcast, the empowering, extra large suitcase of the cancer journey. I'm your host, Jill, longtime oncology certified nurse and cancer support group facilitator. Welcome. This show is designed for survivors and those who love them, and to offer providers insight and fresh perspectives. Our spectrum of guests include inspiring survivors who share their journey, challenges, and how they thrive. Providers who give us insight into strategies for treatment, symptom management, and thriving through all stages of the cancer journey. Cancer care team members will give us behind the scenes insight into cancer care. 

If you understand it better, you'll be a more effective self-advocate. Leaders from cancer support organizations will share their stories and the resources their organizations provide. We'll talk about rekindling intimacy when cancer has changed your world, and we'll break down effective self-advocacy strategies into easy to follow steps. We'll talk about everything cancer. Thank you for listening to the Everything Cancer podcast. 

We greatly appreciate you being part of this community. The information shared on this podcast is not intended to be used for medical advice. For any health care concerns you have, please consult with your health care team. The staff at Everything Cancer podcast will not be answering individual health care concern questions. If you would like to support the Everything Cancer podcast, there are links in the show notes to our Patreon page and our website through which you can do that. 

We would greatly appreciate your support. Also, for information pertinent to our guests and their websites or books they have, there will be links in our show notes for them. We hope you enjoy this episode. Hi, this is your host Jill. I'm glad to have you here. We're going to talk about your crew. 

You've probably heard me mention your crew many times on the other podcasts when I have guests or a couple of the other ones I've recorded solo like I am right now. Segwaying into that is asking for and accepting help, which is something that helps you take care of your own well-being in a better way. That's really important at any point on the cancer journey. Your well-being is paramount to you having optimal outcomes and a better quality of life. So your crew is anyone around you that you feel you can either ask for help or accept help from if they've offered it. 

And for whatever reason, asking or accepting help is hard for a lot of us. And if you're able to match talents of various crew members to tasks or information seeking, advocating on your behalf to the talents of a person on your crew, go for it. They'll feel better about what they're doing because they can wrap their head around it. They know they're making a difference for you, help you get a little bit further ahead. 

And you'll feel better for getting a task that is on your list or next steps taken care of. Some examples might be a neighbor who's very good at gardening that has offered to help. Handing over your whole garden can be really tough. I mean, that can be a heavy lift for somebody else. But if you ask them to take care of a small part of your garden, that is going to take a burden off your shoulders knowing that that's taken care of. And especially if they're talented at it, you'll know it's going to be a job well done. 

Chances are they'll offer again if you've kept the job small or you can ask again. Or they may know someone else who they'll be happy to send over that they're in a garden club with if they know you're going to keep it on the manageable side. Another great thing to set people to is looking up information about your treatment, about your diagnosis, about symptoms you're having, anything that you have questions about. Make sure they're used credible resources. That's important. There's a list of credible resources in Cancer Journey Guide and Journals Empowerment and Diagnosis Treatment and Beyond. 

It's available on Amazon. Some excellent credible resources are the American Cancer Society, the Cancer Research Institute, answercare.org, NCCN Patient Guide and Cancer.net, which is run by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, EdLinePlus. Those are all great places to start. 

Oncemia Lymphoma Society is another good one too. Taking that off of you and at least getting a good start for you and then maybe you can wrap things up for a little bit finer detail if you feel like you need to. That's Getting that done is huge. Another great resource, especially for a mental health perspective, is CancerCare.org. They have oncology social workers that can guide you through, you're feeling overwhelmed, go to their website and see how to reach out. 

You can call them or you can do online conversations. They'll help you unravel what you're overwhelmed with and help point you in a good direction. And they have a lot of resources available through their website. They have counseling from their clinical oncology social workers. They have support groups that are based on either caregiver needs or a particular cancer general, cancer support groups. Once you start looking on that website, you will find so much. Same with the American Cancer Society, Cancer.net. 

They all have so much to offer. CancerCare.org actually kind of is interactive. You're not just going in and reading things and can offer you support. And your local cancer support organizations can as well. There's a lot to be said for reaching out to your local cancer support organization. Another helpful task is to have someone go to your appointments with you. They don't have to go to all, but if they can go to one or two with you and you can spread the wealth amongst your family and friends, having that second set of ears is really helpful. They can also make sure that you're asking the questions you wanted to ask. You and them can compare notes after the visit to make sure you both understood. And this is actually helpful if you're anticipating a complex conversation. 

Another really helpful time for this is when you are anticipating a difficult conversation with your provider, such as asking for a change in treatment or things just aren't going as well as you thought they would. And you feel like you need some moral support in that conversation. That will be helpful to have that second person with you. You can ask them to kind of be your serenade de Bergerac and make sure that you're saying what you want to say or kind of guide you in your conversation with your provider. Another task to set someone to is going over the information that you are given by your provider. Oftentimes, for handed packets that just have paper after paper in them and they all have intent. 

They all have purpose and your provider is giving them to you for a reason. You can ask that person to go through that packet for you or sit down with you and go through your after visit summary and kind of let you know what your next steps need to be, what you need to be aware of. It's a lot to go over, especially after a busy day at a cancer center or after an overwhelming visit. It's helpful to have somebody who's objective and is fresh in their mind and will be able to replay it for you in a manner that is easy to understand. Reaching out to your friends and family, your crew, matching up what they can do for you and their talents is going to help you take better care of yourself, which is going to help you have a better quality of life. 

I can't stress that enough. Another example might be that you know someone who's really good at cleaning and organizing. Ask them to come over and take care of one room. Having that one room taken care of will take a burden off your shoulders and you'll feel less stressed. A lot of people deal with chemotherapy induced cognitive impairment and that does make organization a little harder. So if you can have someone help you and again keep it small and manageable so that they're willing to come over and help you again. In the Cancer Journey guide and journals that's available on Amazon, there's also a journal to track who's come over and what they've done, how they've helped you. You can use that to remind you to send a text to just say thank you or an email. That kind of keeps the love coming when you add a little extra thank you. Another example is me helping you meal prep or dropping off one meal every two weeks or something like that that can take that burden off you. 

So get your crew together, see who's good at what and see how you can accept their help or ask for help to give you a greater sense of well-being. Thanks for being here. I hope you found this episode useful. Next week we have a great guest coming. I can't wait for you to meet Mr. Mike Herman. 

He is a phenomenal speaker and has so much to share. Take care. Next week we have Please Consult with your own health care team. The staff here at Everything Cancer Podcast will not be answering individual health care questions. Thank you. Take care and we'll see you back for the next episode of Everything Cancer. Bye-bye.