NORTH VANCOUVER resident Kate McCandless helps the fami-

NEWS photo Cindy Goodman

ties of cancer victims deal with the pain of death.

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Sunday, April 12, 1992 - North Shore News - 29

KATE McCANDLESS’ first experience with cancer was
when leukemia was diagnosed in her friend’s two-year-old

son.

Over the nexi five years she saw
the courageous battle fought by
the littke boy and then the pro-
found effect his death made on
the family.

At that time, although helping
her friends in their time of need,
McCandless never dreamed that
she would be personally involved
with cancer.

In 1989 Burkitt’s lymphoma
was diagnosed in her 34-year-old
sister.

The cancer is a rare but ag-
gressive and fast-growing cancer
and requires intensive treatment.

McCandless, along with her
parents, rushed to be with her
sister, who was married to a Jap-
anese man and living in Tokyo.

McCandless had previously
spent five years living in Japan
studying Japanese at university
and teaching English. Her sister
had visited McCandless at that
time and met her Japanese hus-
band.

Now McCandless found herself
in the role of interpreter between
her parents and in-laws, and be-
tween the Japanese doctors and
nurses and her sister who had not
yet mastered the language.

Once her sister had begun to
respond to treatment, her parents
left, but McCandless remained
with her sister until she was in
remission before returning to
Canada. Shortly after, her sister
relapsed and had to have a bone
marrow transpiant.

McCandless rushed back to

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Japan, but her sister died.

During the illness and after her
sister died, McCandless felt she
started to learn far more about
herself and her family. She real-
ized that the effect cancer has on
all those intimately involved is
much more complex than anyone
fully understands.

She now feels that people who
have been very close to someone
with cancer become cancer sur-
vivors too.

‘‘Whether the patient is cured,
in remission, or dies, your fife is
changed,’”’ says McCandless.

“If you can acknowledge your
feelings of inadequacy and
helplessness and just be there with
an open heart you are more likely
to catch those special moments of
closeness. You can be sensitive
when the person needs to talk or
cry or have a good laugh or just
be quiet.”

She adds that caregivers must
not forget to look after themselves
while they are caring for someone
else.

“If you practise being kind to
yourself and looking after your
own needs you'll be better able to
know when and how to offer the
patient a massage, a walk, some
special food or music, without
trying to force yourself on them
because you so desperately want

to do something.

“it’s not easy, but you can
learn to live in the present and
experience each moment fully,”’
says McCandless.

She remembered how grateful
she was when people expressed
concern about how she was
managing even though they
couldn’t fully understand, because
“they hadn’t been in a similar sit-
uation.”

It’s especially hard for families
who are separated by geographical
distance.

Cancer support groups are in-
creasingly receiving calls from
people in this situation.

But McCandless did not realize
this when she first decided to vol-
unteer her services to the Cana-
dian Cancer Society. After return-
ing to Canada and learning to live
with the grief of her sister’s death
she wanted to learn more about
health care issues and receive
some training so that she could
help people deal with similar
crises. .

To be able to talk to someone
else who has personally experi-
enced something similar can make
all the difference.

She discovered the cancer sup-
port group called CanSurmount, a
volunteer group that works on a
one-to-one basis. CanSurmount .
volunteers must either have had
cancer themselves or had a close
persona! relationship with some-
one else with cancer.

As in McCandless’ case, they
must have overcome the grief
stage when having lost a loved one

See CanSurmount page 30

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