Cancer patients' friends and families often feel helpless and at a loss as to what to do when they learn of a loved one's diagnosis. While they mean well and want to help, often they are as thrown as the person receiving the diagnosis when they learn that someone close to them has cancer.

As a 10-year cancer survivor and also someone whose Mom, Dad, two aunts, and Grandpa have received cancer diagnoses, I don't know what's more challenging: to be the one diagnosed or to learn a loved one or friend is now a cancer patient. As a cancer patient, your job is clear to follow whichever course of treatment you decide upon and then regain your health. As a friend or loved one, your roles and responsibilities are less clear.

Staggeringly high cancer statistics -- The Canadian Cancer Society's report, Canadian Cancer Stats 2009, states that 40 per cent of Canadian women and 45 per cent of Canadian men will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime -- makes figuring out how to help our family and friends after their cancer diagnosis more important than ever. Doing one or all of the following seven steps will decrease some of the stress of a cancer diagnosis.

1. Ask the cancer patient what you can do to help. Different patients have different needs. Some will appreciate having meals delivered, others having childcare arranged.
2. If your friend or loved one seems hesitant to ask, consider your schedule, your special talents and abilities and make them an offer they can't refuse.
3. Let the cancer patient set the agenda for your conversations. Some will want to vent and need you to listen, while others may want a respite from their reality and want to hear about your life.
4. Offer to accompany your friend or relative to their doctor's appointments. Many medical associations encourage this because they realize that patients aren't always in the best head space to ask what needs to be asked, or for that matter to be relied upon to interpret what's just been said.
5. Stay available; don't disappear because of your discomfort with cancer. Many people reach out at the time of diagnosis and then disappear. When a friend or relative is diagnosed with cancer it's our opportunity to become our best selves so that we can help them in their hour of need. By paying it forward, some day someone will help you when you need it most.
6. Offer to be the point person for communicating the cancer patient's status and progress. People facing a life threatening illness need to put their precious resources into their treatment, and might not have the energy to keep their network in the loop.
7. Don't be a Pollyanna about the patient's situation and conversely, don't repeat many people's mistaken premise that people cause their illness. A cancer patient has enough to deal with without adding guilt into the mix.

Every person with cancer has unique needs and requirements for assistance. How much help is needed, and when, will vary from person to person. But the thing that is constant is the need for community, for people who can help the patient feel that they are more than their diagnosis and that they'll get through this.

Kathy Santini is a 10-year cancer survivor, a life, business and results coach, the owner of Arbutus Coaching and the author of the e-book, Live Your Best Life Now! The Cancer Survivors Guide to Creating a Happy and Meaningful Life, available at http://arbutuscoaching.com/products.php One reviewer wrote, "Thank you for such an AWESOME book and workshop (but especially the book since it goes more in-depth than what you could get into given the time constraints of the workshop.) This is EXACTLY what I needed at this time. EXACTLY!"

Kathy's happy and meaningful life after cancer has involved: spending four months sailing through the Caribbean and Bahamas, doing humanitarian work in Sierra Leone, nursing her dying mother at her sister's home, working as an editor for NATO in a war-torn Kabul Afghanistan and running a successful coaching and speaking business.



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