We are not born knowing how to become Healthy Survivors. We aren't taught in school how to get good care and live as fully as possible when living with, through and beyond cancer or other serious illness. I wish we were.
Today, people diagnosed with life-threatening or life-altering disease don't have to figure it out for themselves. They have access to a bounty of educational riches, including the Cancer Survival Toolbox available free of charge from the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) at www.canceradvocacy.org.
This award-winning resource is a set of audio CDs designed to help people develop the important skills needed to get good care, the first criterion of Healthy Survivorship.
From the cover:
- Audio CDs that let you listen and learn from survivors....
- Full of practical tips and strategies
- [F]or people at any stage of cancer survivorship
These are the CD titles:
- Communicating
- Finding Information
- Making Decisions
- Solving Problems
- Negotiating
- Standing Up for Your Rights
- First STeps for the Newly Diagnosed
- Topics for Older Persons
- Finding Ways to Pay for Care
- Caring for the Caregiver
- Living Beyond Cancer, Part 1 and Part 2
- Dying Well -- The Final Stage of Survivorship
If you know someone newly diagnosed with cancer or challenged by the demands, changes and losses of his or her survivorship, steer them to this fabulous resource and help them become Healthy Survivors.
I'm so glad to know this exists as I head in to third year of medical school and start assuming a role on medical teams that will likely diagnose and certainly treat individuals with cancer. Thank you!
Posted by: Felicity Lenes | May 12, 2011 at 05:28 AM
Thank you for posting this. I'm always amazed (and saddened) at how little information is presented to the newly diagnosed by their doctors. When a patient receives a diagnosis, he or she should be handed a card with a link to www.canceradvocacy.org or the toolkit itself, with words said kindly, "You are not alone. Many have walked this path before you."
Posted by: Lori Hope | May 12, 2011 at 06:48 AM
Thank you Dr Wendy. I said something similar the other day. When they said to me, YOU HAVE CANCER, I didn't immediately know all there was to know to handle it. A newly diagnosed patient is so over-whelmed and frightened most the time that they really can't handle it. And then they hand you a schedule of tests and treatments that also adds t your confusion. Friends and Family thought that I had it all figured out and was supposed to be able to teach them. I tried to quit before I started treatment and I am a nurse. Now when someone says, "I don't know what I am supposed to say." My reply is, "Say anything, I don't know what to say either." Thank you. This tool kit IS helpful.
Jonnie Hickman
Posted by: Jonnie Hickman | May 12, 2011 at 06:58 AM