How to Help Seniors with Cancer Diagnosis

Cancer – you hear the word and nothing more. Seniors who receive a cancer diagnosis can shut down, tuning out a doctor’s important instructions or failing to understand technical terms and complicated directions. Seniors facing cancer diagnoses often need help to understand their treatment options, and the risks and benefits of each choice.

Consider these tips when helping a loved one with cancer:

• Focus on the absolute risk. The most important statistic to consider is the chance that something will happen to you. Using relative risk makes both patients and doctors more likely to favor a treatment, because they believe it to be more beneficial than it actually may be. 

• The order of information matters. Studies have shown that the last thing you hear is most likely to stick. When making a treatment decision, don’t forget to consider all of the information and statistics you’ve learned.

• Write it down. You may be presented with a lot of information. At the end of the discussion, ask your doctor if a written summary of the risks and benefits is available. Or ask your doctor to help you summarize.

• Less may be more. Don’t get overwhelmed by too much information. In some cases, there may be many different treatment options, but only a few may be relevant to you. Ask your doctor to narrow it down.

• Go to www.SeniorEmergencyKit.com for more tips on how to be better prepared for medical appointments. One way is to take someone with you to help ask questions and understand the information. 

If you are unavailable to assist a loved one with tasks such as these, Home Instead Senior Care can help. Our CAREGivers provide companionship and transportation services on a scheduled and on-call basis. They can help manage appointments, escort to doctor visits, pick up prescriptions and more.


For more on the study, click here.