Survivor's Blog May 9, 2013 - Weekdays with with Friends... a new blog feature.

This week, I am starting a new portion of the blog. Once a week I will be featuring articles written for this blog by my friends, family, and others who have been affected by cancer. The topic of each post will be guided by what kind of help cancer patients need, and what kind of help supporters can reasonably provide for a patient. I truly feel that many times our friends and family have no idea how best to help out when a family member has a life threatening illness. Many times when people ask  if they can help, I reply with a " no I am fine" because, I just don't have any idea what kind of help to ask for? In my case, there are many days when I am just too sick to concentrate on figuring out what people can do to contribute.

 I believe that if survivors, friends, and caregivers have a variety of ideas for helping during a life threatening situation, new cancer patients might be helped by our ideas. At some point, I would actually like to compile a simple list of things patients can allow our supporters to do for us. The goal is to get support we need when and where we need it. On the flip side, those who love us can actually participate in our care.

 I asked the cancer survivors: what one or two things were most helpful to them when they had cancer?

For those who are caregivers or friends of people who have cancer I asked: what did you do to help your family member during the illness? What did your family member seem to appreciate most?

Tomorrow I will post the first of the blog articles I have collected. If you would like to contribute  a post to this discussion please contact me at taraleed@live.com .  Blog posts can be long or short and I am not going to edit them at all ( except for spell check). Feel free to use the comments section on the blog to let me know what you think?

My family Oscar, Erin, Aunt Sue, Courtney, and myself in the summer of 2011 right after my surgery.