A care giver is someone who gives you support in terms of physical, emotional and financial needs. They are the ones who accompany the patient to medical appointments, helps with treatment decisions, coordinate medical care, help with transportation, help with emotional needs. Usually care givers are family members of the patients but occasionally they can be family or friends. There may be more than one care givers supporting each of these individual needs or there may be one single person doing all of these.

Caregivers have a tough ,challenging and exhausting journey especially when dealing with cancer patients. Every care givers journey is unique. The initial diagnosis is tough to accept and it takes a while to accept the reality and getting ready to face the challenges ahead. The care givers would further have to get a deeper understanding of the treatment plan, good oncologist, hospital and further planning like financial planning, caretaking, professional life etc. 

Care givers will have to adapt, modify their daily lives to manage the changes of working hours and personal routines. Juggling between medical appointments, treatment decisions, financial arrangements for the treatments, internal struggle with self care and guilt. They have to deal with initial shock of diagnosis, anxiety and depression They have a huge responsibility of communicating with the medical team , acting as a bridge between the rest of the family and the medical team and ensuring the patients needs are met. Over a period of time, they learn to navigate uncertainty as cancer is highly uncertain and unpredictable. 

There’s a constant struggle between taking care of them and taking care of themselves. Unfortunately there is no organized setup or mechanism to support and guide them in their journey. Most of the hospitals tend to focus exclusively on the patients as they are critical and completely neglect the caregiver.

Care givers can get frustrated and have a burnout eventually if they don’t seek support. Support can be sort from loved ones, family, friends, relatives, support groups, communities etc. The only way is to share the burden to reduce the stress.

Positive attitude makes a difference. Being positive and creating happy environment around the patient, engaging them in different activities, daily chores keeps them occupied and helps them through the journey.

Cancer care givers feel that they are fine and the ones diagnosed need all the support. However they fail to understand that they also need equal amount of  support. Cancer diagnosis causes stress, anxiety, financial burden etc. Arranging finances, paperwork for the same are all time consuming tasks. Taking care of cancer patient takes all your time and focus. 

Care givers need to take time to take a break may be like exercise, social networking, hobbies etc. There are lot of communities that they can connect for support. They need to make plans for future with legal and financial planning. With all that’s going on, the care giver needs to realize that they need to stay healthy as well. Usually they tend to prioritize the patients health and forget about their own.  They need to approach community groups and volunteers to get help in all possible ways.