Cancer Care Package...what would you put in it?

[AlaskaAngel]

When my older sister was diagnosed with a second cancer recently, we got together with our other sister at an exceptionally beautiful place for a weekend, all to ourselves (pets allowed of course), and did walks and talks and picnicked together.

Like "Pray" here, I put together a couple of books (John Link's among them, and Dr. Susan Love's), and then also made a binder with sections and pockets for the different specialty docs she would be seeing (general oncology, rads, PCP) with a writing pad in it and a calendar that had room on the bottom of each monthly page for a few notes. I think it helps to build confidence by having an organized way to keep track of all the information one deals with in answering questions and making appointments on the run. Whenever she ran into problems, she and her daughters were able to go over what was in the binder together and figure out from what was in it what else she needed to ask for, and what had happened over time. It helped to keep them all on the "same page", even though not all of them were there for everything she went through. I also started a pocket in it for photographs and they helped her keep very real track of her progress, and she was able to use them several times with her different physicians as well, to keep them on track.

AlaskaAngel