Firstly, Kathleen Foley, MD, a neurologist and former chief of the Pain and Palliative Care Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York City says that stress can exacerbate pain, so you can make a big difference by blocking things that agitate your loved one. Jen Singer, who was being treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, said her husband ‘kept the kids and the neighbours and the phone out of my way when I wasn’t feeling well,’ as well as keeping her pain prescriptions at hand.
Next, according to Terri Ades, director of cancer information for the American Cancer Society, cancer patients ‘often assume that if they’re not in pain, they don’t need to take their medications,’ but as most pain medications work when administered on a regular basis, making sure your loved one stays on-schedule will help prevent gaps between doses and flare-ups. Ades also advises guiding your loved one through focused breathing and other meditative exercises, to relieve muscle tension and stress. Massage in a firm, circular motion around areas of pain (avoiding red or swollen areas) may also help, she adds.
Distracting your loved one from pain with something they enjoy can help to actually alleviate it. Cathy Bueti says that her friends helped her get through cancer by stopping by with ice cream during their lunch hour: ‘We just sat in my apartment and ate some ice cream and caught up on some girl talk. That was something that was really simple but helped me get out of whatever moment I was in.’
However, Timothy Moynihan, MD, a medical oncologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota warns that you need to know when to step back, and let your loved one do the things they want to do for themselves. ‘Well-meaning people can be overbearing at times, even with the best of intentions,’ he says. It may be that the best thing you can do is just listen, says breast cancer patient Susan Henle, as she said that when she talked to her family about the pain and depression that comes along with it, ‘more I talked to them, the better I would feel.’ Jen Singer adds that the most important thing was knowing that her husband took her pain seriously.