How To Become A Good Caregiver

If your wife or loved one has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, you are most likely just as stunned and frightened as she is. Unlike many other illnesses, this one carries a distinct connotation of death, fear of the unknown, and also the foreboding that unpleasant medical treatments will be utilized in an effort to save her life. Sharing the burden is a difficult undertaking, and if you want to be completely honest, you know that in order to share the burden, you need to take the lion's share of it onto your shoulders.

Becoming a caregiver for an ovarian cancer patient is not an easy proposition but it can be done! Begin by learning about the disease itself from Internet sources and also available texts and education materials from your local library. It should not be your goal to be on equal footing with the patient's doctors, but instead to have an overview of what to expect in such an illness.

Accompany your wife or loved one to the doctor. Make it your responsibility to know where the office is located, do the driving, set the schedule to ensure you are not rushing, and initiate a brainstorming session with your loved one about which questions to ask. Compile this data and keep it handy. Make it your responsibility to tote it to all of the doctors' appointments and to keep it up to date.

When you are at the doctor's office, your wife or loved one will do the talking with the help of the notes you took. Take your own notes about the responses the doctor gave. Look for subtle clues that your loved one does not understand an answer or is becoming frustrated. At that point do not hesitate to calmly but succinctly jump in and restate the question in such a way that the doctor will rephrase the answer. If nothing else, ask until you are sure you understand and then you may help her understand later on what the doctor said. This is especially crucial if there are language barriers.

Becoming a good caregiver also means capitalizing on your relationship with your wife's or loved one's medical providers. Get answers to questions covering topics such as record keeping, time frames for treatments, side effects, pain management, insurance issues, and of course whom to contact in case of questions or problems after treatment. Find out what side effects are common and which necessitate a call to the doctor or hospital.

What can make being a caregiver sometimes frustrating are differences of opinion with your loved one. For example, you may believe that pain and cancer are fairly synonymous and thus it is only normal that she will have pain. Your wife or loved one may have the fear that pain is a sure sign that the cancer has gotten worse but because she does not want to be a burden or frighten you, she requests more pain medication. Accept that this is a situation that requires the help of a doctor and openly but respectfully describe your difference of opinion. While the patient has the last say, you both may be surprised to learn that you are wrong. In this case, pain is part of the disease but not indicative of a worsening of the condition; pain in this case does not serve a purpose and eliminating it by medicinal means is not only appropriate but also suggested!