12 Ways How To Help Cancer Patients

Cancer can be a long and emotional journey but with these 12 Ways How To Help Cancer Patients list, you can make a difference in someone’s life by giving encouragement, sharing sorrows and joys and understanding their needs.

When I was diagnosed with colon cancer I was homeschooling our last two kids for their junior and senior year. Knowing what I was up against treatment wise we decided to send our junior to private school and our senior, Courtney, decided to get her CNA license and stay home with me so she could be my caregiver through chemo, radiation, and several surgeries. I believe she learned more about life and what she wanted to do as a career that year than she ever would have had she gone to school. She did pick up where she left off the following year with a new perspective on life and how she would like to live her’s.

This list was written by Courtney as part of a college class presentation she had to do. It has wonderful tips from a care giver’s perspective for helping close family and friends to acquaintances that have cancer.

1 → Give the gift of a journal. The cancer patient can journal their thoughts, write prayers out, events and milestones as they go through treatments which helps emotionally during their cancer journey.

2 → Let a cancer patient know you are there if they need to talk. Don’t tell them just once, but remind them throughout their treatments. Mail them cards periodically to let them know you are praying for them.

3 → Put up sticky notes in your home to remind you to pray for someone you know going through cancer treatments. Pray for their healing, emotional state of mind, their family, and that they would be drawn even closer to their Lord.

4 → On days a cancer patient has chemo or radiation take a meal for their family so they can rest and know their family is taken care of.

5 → Give them gift cards to the grocery or restaurants, this helps take off a financial burden and it makes it easy for their family to pick up a meal.

6 → Another good idea for how to help cancer patients is to organize a fundraiser to help ease the financial burden of cancer. There are so many little things that add up that insurance will not cover. You can start a Go Fund Me page and share it with other friends and family so they can help too.

7 → Doctors offices are always looking for a donation of snacks when people are getting chemo treatments. Many times the snacks in doctors offices lean more on the side of junk food such as chips, candy bars, and soda. Take in healthy snacks such as nuts, fruit, diet ginger ale, and natural juices.

8 → If you are crafty you can make all kinds of items that will help a cancer patient. Chemo makes a patient not able to tolerate cold so knitted hats, scarves or gloves are a good choice. You could also make cards with prayers and thinking of you thoughts in them, many people are alone and could use some encouragement.

9 → Donate books, puzzle books, and magazines to the doctor’s office. Some chemo treatments can take 5 or more hours.

10 → Give a cancer patient a copy of John Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Cancer. Piper shares with the reader how Christians are called to respond when cancer invades their lives, whether in their own bodies or those of a friend or family member. Piper gently but firmly acknowledges that we can indeed waste our cancer when we don’t see how it is God’s good plan for us and a hope-filled path for making much of Jesus.

11 → Give small gifts to mark special milestones of their healing journey. Peppermint lotions, candles, and candies are helpful on days they feel nauseous. Ginger tea or gum is also helpful for nausea.

12 → Offer to clean their house and do laundry. If they feel uncomfortable having you do it hire a series to come in and help. This eases a big burden when a person does not feel good and allows them to rest.