A major factor contributing to an individual's ability to stay positive and cope with having a serious illness is the support system that surrounds that person. For teens and young adults with cancer, friends can be a really helpful part of a support system because they can provide some "normal" interactions and experiences in the midst of such an abnormal situation. However, communicating and interacting with friends after a diagnosis of cancer can be really complicated and confusing. Friends may not want to say the wrong thing so they may say nothing to you at all, thereby coming across as ignoring you and your situation even though that is not actually the case. You may not know what to say to your friends or how to say it and that is an added challenge.
I know I personally struggled a lot with maintaining friends during my treatment. I'm not entirely sure how much of that struggle was related to them not knowing how to act around me or related to how much I was unsure how to communicate my unique situation to them. Either way, I sometimes wonder how things may have gone differently had I been given advice on the subject. In an effort to help you avoid my particular struggle, I want to share a great resource I came across recently.
The National Children's Cancer Society (NCCS) is an awesome organization that provides financial and informational resources to children with cancer and their families. They have also started to develop more and more resources for teenage cancer patients and survivors. A particularly helpful resource they have produced is called "An Educational Guide for Friends of Teens with Cancer." The guide is meant to be given in its entirety to a friend to help him/her understand what to do and what to say for you - their friend with cancer. I definitely recommend sharing it with your friends, or even just taking a look at it yourself so you can get some ideas on how to communicate with your friends about your cancer and your treatment!
I know I personally struggled a lot with maintaining friends during my treatment. I'm not entirely sure how much of that struggle was related to them not knowing how to act around me or related to how much I was unsure how to communicate my unique situation to them. Either way, I sometimes wonder how things may have gone differently had I been given advice on the subject. In an effort to help you avoid my particular struggle, I want to share a great resource I came across recently.
The National Children's Cancer Society (NCCS) is an awesome organization that provides financial and informational resources to children with cancer and their families. They have also started to develop more and more resources for teenage cancer patients and survivors. A particularly helpful resource they have produced is called "An Educational Guide for Friends of Teens with Cancer." The guide is meant to be given in its entirety to a friend to help him/her understand what to do and what to say for you - their friend with cancer. I definitely recommend sharing it with your friends, or even just taking a look at it yourself so you can get some ideas on how to communicate with your friends about your cancer and your treatment!
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