Guidance for Caregivers

Abstract

Professional, family, and friend caregivers have a crucial role for cancer patients in mortal time. They are companions who experience both rewards and risks on the cancer journey. One risk is that the caregiver can be in a different place than the patient with regard to accepting or denying their mortality. The caregiver may be holding on to ordinary time while their loved one is letting go. This can create incongruent communication. Other challenges include complex family dynamics that can make for difficult interactions. Competent caregivers bring important virtues to the relationship, which give life to the process of companioning. These virtues include compassion, genuineness, courage, respect, humor, and awareness of limitations. A significant risk to professional and family caregivers is “empathy shift,” in which the caregiver companion begins to have less tolerance for minor illnesses (colds and flu) in others. Being a caregiver in mortal time requires resilience, the ability to absorb suffering, and the capacity to share the darkness, to share the sadness that is the partner of loss foretold by mortality. These activities can literally help mend the patient and help repair the world in the manner of the Jewish concept of tikkun olam. Professional caregivers are commonly asked, “How can you do this anyway . . . work with cancer patients?” Answers vary widely but often include the fact that although cancer care is a challenge, it is also an opportunity to discover courage in the face of life-threatening illness.