Ribbons for Caregivers?

This week I participated in a great seminar on cancer and caregiving presented by the organization To Life! Tons of new information on genetic testing and hormone replacement therapies. Answers to the questions you didn’t even know that you wanted to ask. But it was –again—the conversations with caregivers that blew me away. How much life caregivers spend without even knowing how deeply they are committed or how much it might be affecting their life and health.

I always think that people must know the impact of caregiving and then each time I talk to a group it’s there again: caregivers are working fulltime, raising kids, caring for at least one elderly parent and a spouse or partner with cancer. And they are apologizing about some part of their life they are not doing well: missed a friend’s birthday; haven’t followed international news; missed a new movie. And the big thing they are skipping is attention to their own healthcare and that has disastrous effects for the caregiver and the family.

Caregivers skip annual physicals, mammograms, blood tests, dexascans, teeth cleaning, medication monitoring. Nobody wants to go to another doctor when you are actively caring for someone with cancer—you see far too many medical waiting rooms—with awful magazines and terrible TV—and so caregivers get sick.

We know that breast cancer is hard and colon cancer is hard and lung cancer is hard but caregiving is hard too and mostly it goes unacknowledged by medical professionals even though there are big medical consequences.

So, what color is the ribbon for caregivers? Should it be a rainbow because caregiving encompasses every serious illness? Or should the caregiver ribbon be clear plastic because caregiving and its consequences are still invisible?

Cancer Cancer Everywhere

A beautiful late winter snow day…tons of unexpected snow and I am in my flannel pajamas at 5pm. Delicious. Also delicious: today I made real Mexican hot chocolate concocted with a bar of real dark chocolate, cream and hot red peppers. And my new toy: a battery operated wisk. (Almost as much fun as other battery operated devices.)

But a soft drum beat in the distance: cancer, cancer, cancer. An old friend has breast cancer, a new friend has bone marrow cancer, a coworker’s child has brain cancer. In today’s paper a reminder that while we oooh and ahh over breast cancer and even colon cancer it will be lung cancer that will kill the most. Lung cancer kills seven times more than all other cancers put together.

Why no ribbons or races or fashion shows for Lung Cancer?

Because we think it is deserved by smokers and their families. A subtle shaming and discrimination. But get this: 80% of all lung cancer diagnoses are in folks who never smoked or who quit decades ago.

What color should the ribbons be?