How You Can Help
Ways to Support a Loved One with Hodgkin's Disease

1. Donate Blood to the American Red Cross
One of the best gifts that a bone marrow transplant or cancer patient can receive is the girt of blood. During my chemotherapy cycles and my stem cell transplant, I was constantly receiving red packed blood cells. The red cells increased my hemoglobin and prevented severe fatigue. In the four months prior to my transplant, I received 12 units of red packed blood cells. During my transplant and in the months following, I received about 10 more units. Each donor can donate one unit of blood every two months. To keep my blood supply going, friends and family members would schedule appointments at my hospital's blood bank and donate blood for me or they would put themselves on my donor list and would be called in every time my doctors anticipated that I would need blood. The blood that was typed for me I received, and the other blood products were opened up to the whole hospital for use. Donating blood takes only 15-30 minutes. For many patients, the gift of blood is the gift of life. To donate, contact your local hospital or the place or treatment for your loved one.

2. Join the National Marrow Registry
For those friends and loved ones who have been truly affected and would like a way to provide support for the community at large, think about joining the National Marrow Registry. Many transplants these days require unrelated donors. Only 1 in 20,000 are a match, and your match could be the Marrow that provides life for a patient in desperate need. Donating costs about $80 for people of white European decent, and is free for minorities. Many drives are taking place in your area where you can donate for free. To find a drive in your area, visit http://www.BoneMarrowTest.com. For More information on joining the Marrow Registry, visit http://www.abmdr.org.

3. Pregnant Women, Donate your Cord Blood
Cord Blood donations are easy and completely painless. After the baby is born you can store their cord blood on registry. The stem cells will be later on harvested if they are a match for someone in need of an unrelated transplant. Cord blood collection practices vary around the world. In some locations, cord blood can only be stored for your own family's potential use. For more information on how you can donate, please visit: http://www.nybc.org/

4. Sign up Donate Platelets
Platelets are collected separately from the regular blood but the procedure for donating is very much the same. The major differences is that you get two IV needles instead of one, and the process takes a couple of hours, so bring a video or friend along! For bone marrow transplant patients who cannot produce their own platelets, this can be one of the best gifts they can receive. While I was in transplant I received platelets from my mother and sister. The donation process is painless and can be done every other week. Many people donate platelets twice a month for decades. For more information on how you can donate, please visit: http://www.redcross.org/ 

Ways to Be Sensitive & Supportive to a Friend with Cancer
from Lisa's Good Health Web Site by Lisa Kramer

1. Make Direct Honest Offers to Help Out
Be as honest as possible when making offers to help. As sincere as you are when you say something like "Please call if there is anything I can do," it is very awkward for someone in need to take you up on this kind offer. Try to make your offer more specific. Something like, "I want to bring over dinner tonight so that you don't have to worry about feeding your kids." This is more direct and is something that is easier to say "thank you" for than to ask for. Try offering to cook prepared meals to bring over on chemo nights. You can also bring gift certificates redeemable at places where you know your friend likes to order take-out food if you can't cook. Try offering to drive to and from treatments. Consider doing a grocery run, or offer to go buy cat food. If you can't be there in person, perhaps you could send a gift certificate for cleaning help. Try thinking of something else creatively helpful and fun. It certainly doesn't have to cost money to be helpful!

2. Provide Humorous & Nurturing Material
Bring over your all-time favorite funny video for a long-term loan. Or give your friend gift certificates to stores that sell videos so he or she can stock up on series of particularly appealing classics. Send funny emails, or even an eGreeting. Buy or lend funny books. Send gift certificates to movie theatres. Come over and tell funny jokes. Lend soothing CD's or cassettes. Give massages or foot-rubs. Sing songs. Read poetry. Anything that provides laughter or comfort is healing and is always welcomed.

3. Help Your Friend Coordinate Assistance
Often people have made generic offers to help, but the person in need has no good way to coordinate those offers. See if you might be able to offer assistance by contacting people on your friend's behalf to arrange for them to follow through on their offers. Your friend will get his or her much needed help and the folks who made the offers will feel like they are actually helping, as opposed to waiting around for the call for help that may never come. If you happen to be someone well connected all the better, but these high-tech means are by no means required for the job!

4. Understand that Needs Change
Some folks might be less willing to accept concrete help than others. If you have offered and have been refused, don't take offence. You might try asking again a few weeks later, or you might try directly asking your friend what, exactly, it is you could do to help most. I am told by other cancer survivors that there can be a fine line between maintaining a sense of privacy and accepting outside help. Your friend may not yet know where that line lies for himself or herself.

5. Offer Support to Your Friends Support-Person
The tendency is to focus attention on the individual dealing first-hand with cancer. But the needs of the partner or main support-giver can often get lost in the haze. See if there is anything you can do to make this person's life a little easier. He or she may just need a willing ear to listen, may need company for an excursion to a distracting movie, or may need something completely different to take his or her mind off things. Try being creative -- a coupon for a therapeutic massage, a distracting video, a walk in the park feeding ducks, ... If you reach out, you may be able to provide more help than you can imagine. Support people refers to parents, good friends, spouses, kids, etc. Caner is stressful on everyone.

6. Over the Phone, be Sensitive to the Needs of Your Friend
Cancer survivor can feel overwhelmed by telephone calls. Always ask if your timing is appropriate, and if it isn't, then just convey your good wishes and offer your friend the option to call you back when convenient. See if there is a particular time for convenient phone calls. And be sensitive to the possibility that your friend may need short breaks from phone contact at difficult times. Try sending faxes, postcards, letters, eGreetings, or emails. Even consider leaving voice messages instead. These can be incredibly uplifting.

7. Try Not to Offer Platitudes
As much as we all want to believe "Everything is going to be all right!", hearing people say that can make someone living with cancer feel like the gravity of their plight is being trivialized or under-appreciated. Although that statement is very optimistic and well-intended, it can convey a lack of understanding about the severity of the situation. Statements I myself have found more helpful include "We think about you every day," "You are in our prayers," "I wish I was there to give you a great big hug," "If only there were something I could actually do to make this easier for you," etc. This may be a personal preference, but I find the latter statements more heartfelt and touching.