Cancer and Career

Managing cancer can feel like a full-time job all in itself. Add an actual job and career into the mix and there may be some increased challenges to navigate through. It may seem impossible to focus on your health when you need to work to pay for it all. If you are working through cancer, you need to clearly ask for what you need from your employer and co-workers, and remember that your top job is your own well-being. Cancer is a very personal disease and can be handled however you want. Co-workers only need to know information you feel comfortable sharing. Just because you work with them doesn’t mean you owe them any personal information, updates on your health or even your feelings.

Reflection of your role

• Try to process the presence of your job in your life and determine your

needs when it comes to treatment and your career.

• Tell your doctor exactly what your job is and any unique circumstances

you’ll be coping with during treatment.

• Let your doctor know that it’s important to you to make decisions that

are good for your health and your job whenever possible.

• Ask for general ideas of how your diagnosis, medication or treatment

could affect your job.

• See if you can be flexible with the time you take your medications in order to minimize any side effects at work. – i.e., oral chemotherapy and other options that might be less disruptive to your work schedule.

Setting limits

Sometimes it is necessary to say “no” and set limits at work. Everyone has limits and it is important to take the time to figure out what yours are and what triggers them. In personal lives, it may be easy to tell someone that space is needed or you prefer to be left alone. However, work culture often makes that hard to do, making it critical to find productive ways to communicate your limits. Learning to set these boundaries on the job might enable you to decline certain types of requests, such as staying late for nonessential tasks or accepting new projects. Figuring out how to set limits can help you become a better employee; you won’t be overburdened with extra work or feel trapped by every task you receive. The key to setting effective boundaries in the workplace is crafting language that feels natural and communicates the “no” message in a way that is still professional and teamoriented.

Items to keep at work

• A notebook to jot down your impressions, notes, questions for the

doctor, etc.

• Digital recorder or tape recorder

• Post-It notes or flags to highlight important pages in documents • Pens, pencils and highlighters to help remember important items