Jeff Foster talks with a woman about how to best support a loved one who is in emotional distress. Recorded 26th April live in Holland.
06:20 min
CLEAR ALL
You not calling, as a friend, can actually compound the grief and loss they are feeling. Just pick up the phone, even if you get it wrong, just have a conversation and do your best. Your friend with cancer is still the same person they were before.
Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will.
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One night in 1967, twenty-six-year-old John Donohue—known as Chick—was out with friends, drinking in a New York City bar. The friends gathered there had lost loved ones in Vietnam. Now they watched as antiwar protesters turned on the troops themselves.
For the first time in forever, Nathan Adrian truly has no idea if he’ll have a strong swim Friday. And at this point, it doesn’t really matter to the five-time Olympic gold medalist. He’s simply elated to be back.
‘Skin cancer worked its way into my lymph nodes. I was devastated.’
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“It’s cancer.” When you hear the two words you dread most from someone you care about, you know at once that your friend’s life has been turned upside down. Whether she’s a good friend, a best friend, or just an acquaintance, you want to be supportive.
According to the American Cancer Society, cancer diagnoses in the U.S. take place at a rate of over 1.8 million per year, or roughly one every 17.5 seconds. One out of every three women and one out of every two men in this country will get cancer in their lifetimes.
Cancer patients deal daily with dread stirred by organisms produced by the body they attack.
Understanding the patterns of reaction to a prolonged illness with perhaps years of remission and a significant chance of being cured will help you put your emotional survival in focus while your doctor concentrates on your physical survival.
After treatment ends, one of the most common concerns survivors have is that the cancer will come back. The fear of recurrence is very real and entirely normal. Although you cannot control whether the cancer returns, you can control how much the fear of recurrence affects your life.