Coping with Cancer

1. Emotional support – there are lot of challenges, changes and adjustments in life when something difficult and unexpected happens, these things affect the emotional and mental health of a person.
   
   
   
   This gives rise to anxiety, confusion, grief, fear, anger, helplessness and other distressing feelings in a cancer patient. 35-45% of cancer patients and their loved ones experience significant amount of emotional distress.
   
   
   
   Individual counseling along with a family member will help the patient to deal with lifestyle changes, relationship problems, family and financial tensions, fear, anxiety and depression. A counselor will listen to a patients issues and provide support in the following areas –
   
   • Where to go and whom to contact for financial and practical aids.
   • How to deal with emotional and mental health.
   • How to maintain healthy relationships with family and friends.
   • Spiritual growth and learning to believe in faith and hope.
2. Nutritional support – a dietician will provide nutritional counseling to cancer patients receiving treatment to prevent and manage nutritional problems like weight loss and lack of appetite due to nausea and vomiting.
   
   
   
   It involves collaborative approach with the family and patients to achieve nutritional goals.
3. Practical support – involves how to deal with financial situations such as money for the expensive treatments, work related issues, housing and medical aids.
4. Managing symptoms and side effects – there are various side effects of cancer treatment that includes breathlessness, emotional issues, fatigue, nausea, pain, thinking or memory dysfunction, skin or wound care and neutropenia.
   
   
   
   Managing these side effects is very important to decrease the emotional and physical healing time.
5. Palliative support – the main goal of palliative care is to improve the quality of life, manage the disease and decrease mortality of cancer patients whose cancer cannot be cured. Palliative support makes a cancer patient understand the following things –
   
   • Death is a normal process that cannot be speed up or delayed.
   • Embrace life and provides pain relief.
   • Integrates the spiritual and psychological aspect of life.
   • Supports patients and the family members to cope with the unwanted process of death.