Creating a Personal and Professional Support System
Mission BTB: My Ongoing Journey with Stage 4 Prostate Cancer
As a newly diagnosed patient, I suddenly had a lot to deal with: needing to learn everything about the disease, navigate the complexities of medical treatment options, get multiple medical opinions; and understand what this meant for my family, my physical capability moving forward, my professional career, my finances… and the list goes on.
Could I have dealt with all this without a strong support structure? Absolutely not!
As a new and unwillingly drafted patient of a serious disease, I needed to unburden my mind as much as possible from all the above complexities, so I could put most of my energy into dealing with treatments and healing myself. But that’s easier said than done!
There is nothing that I can think of that can prepare someone for this situation… so when it does happen, the question really is, “Do I hide socially and try to do this all by myself, or do I solicit support from wherever I could get?” And getting that meaningful support requires being vulnerable and honest about the situation with people around me; this is not something I knew how to do well.
As an engineer by training and being in leadership roles in the tech business, people like me are programmed to solve problems and deal with tough shit, and not be soft and appear vulnerable either in professional or social settings. Initially, I was comfortable informing friends and people factually about what has happened, without implying a need for emotional support.
Fortunately, I married a woman who knew the importance of having a strong emotional support system and how to go about it. It’s naturally who she is, and as Hospitalist she deals with critical life conversations with her critically ill patients and families on daily basis. So, when lighting struck us, she took the lead in setting up our approach.
Creating a Personal Support Network
As mentioned in my first blog, Monika decided that she needed to carry the burden of communicating our situation to most of the relevant people in our immediate family and social network. We discussed who is in what level of information circle… and by no means even the most intimate circle was a small list. We are blessed to have many relatively large friend circles around us, but that also means repeating the story to so many people can be very draining. And that’s what she wanted to protect me from in those early days, besides the fact that she is just better at opening up.
She was also very clear that while we have each other, and our joint support network, at the same time we will need our independent go-to supporters as well. While we were putting on a brave face to deal with the situation, it did not mean we will not have individual bouts of fear. And while we are very open to each other, we also need to be able to protect each other from those fears… as it can create a spiraling effect. Because family members are always just too closely tied in and have their own emotional bondage and fears related to the situation, it’s sometimes better to lean on friends as needed when you are down and need pick-me-up support.
Since she was dealing with all the initial external conversations even with some of my close friends, I thought we were good. But when she called out the need for me to have my individual go-to personal support system as well, I reluctantly understood the purpose of that. It also meant that I could not hide behind her forever and would need to open up about my fears and vulnerabilities to a few close friends as needed in the coming days, weeks, and months. That was not a natural instinct for me… I was just not programmed that way, but I had to try doing it.
I started to iterate on how to have some of these chats with relevant friends, observing clues from their reactions and going from there. This is not a flip of a switch from stone-walled to fully open; it’s an iterative process. What I learned was that it was ok to communicate the uncertainty of life, but not to create a situation of either self-pity or give someone else a chance to pity. Focus on confidence in the process of dealing with it and any support needed for that, and not worry about the outcome. And just learn to mix humor about the absurdity of life.
This was one of the most positive changes that I made and that has helped me immensely in my journey, and the fact that I can even write these blogs is an outcome of that change.
There is also a flip/downside of not opening up… if people perceive or believe that you are a very strong person based on who you are, then they may also assume that you are self-sufficient in taking care of yourself and don’t need extra support. Believe me, no one can or should go through this journey all alone. It does not matter how strong they have been in the past… so help break that mold and let people in, so they feel comfortable helping.
Slowly, I got better at this and embraced it more. I understood that there is really no shame or harm in doing so… being honest and open signaled to the other person a level of trust, and instead of judging or pitying my situation, they became my champions and went the many extra miles to help me.
Creating a Professional Support Network
All the personal communications transpired in the first week of our finding out about the disease, and I took that week off from work to deal with all this. This also gave me a sense of how to deal with this at work when I go back the next week. It was clear to me that I would have to make changes at work and not try to be a superman who would continue to deal with a grueling tech industry work and travel schedule while dealing with my treatments and disease. While I definitely love what I do professionally, my personal priorities changed. I will have to lean on teams around me a bit more and find a new work-life balance, while still delivering the outcomes that I was accountable for.
So, the next Monday, December 3rd, 2018, when I got back to work, I openly shared with my team in my staff meeting the cancer diagnosis, the seriousness and uncertainty associated with it, the upcoming treatment plan of 2 weeks of radiation and then 6-cycles of chemo that will go on till April 2019 as a starting point. I positioned my life’s challenge as an opportunity for them to grow faster and increase the surface area of their responsibilities, while I’ll continue to be there as a mentor and coach to help them. Everyone in the meeting could sense the emotion and humility in my voice and could see my soul through my almost wet eyes. I had 1:1s with everyone later that day and they expressed their shock, anger, and disbelief with the situation, but at the same time shared their unwavering support for me to get through all this and immense belief that I’ll be well!
I vividly remember one of the managers under me in the team expressing that he was mentally very upset all that day from this news and could not reconcile the fact that something like this could happen to a person like me (with the tone that I am a genuinely good person with a decent and healthy lifestyle). It was a reminder that in the grand scheme of things no one is special enough to be isolated from life’s grief and we all have our journey of life somewhat pre-destined, and each turn we run into is an opportunity to embrace the journey, make positive changes, and make the best lemonade out it. That’s how we control the journey and perhaps change its course. That’s how I am going about it… that tone helped everyone around me be positive and do everything that they could to support me.
I had similar 1:1 conversations with relevant people in my management chain and peers setting the tone of what to expect of me at work and what I expect from them as well. Within a few days, I got a strong circle of support established around me at work where everyone cared deeply about my well-being and my getting better. They were going to do whatever it took to support me professionally and personally.
I must acknowledge my team, the people, and the culture at Micron Technology, my employer, for being very supportive of the personal needs of team members going through life situations. It is a genuinely caring and accommodating culture. While I don’t have a current reference point of any other corporation since I did not have to deal with a situation like this for myself or others around me, my hope is that this is a norm rather than an exception across all types of corporations.
While the culture and people of any workplace can be genuinely good, I believe the kind of support you evoke has to do with how you open up about your own challenge. You can choose to be silent, and people around you will still become aware that you are dealing with some major life/medical issue because you might take extra time off and you might change your work pattern. I worked from home all of Jan-Apr of 2019 while undergoing chemo as we were extra cautious of immunity and infection issues, and this was pre-COVID. But by opening up, I felt like I made others comfortable in asking me anything and offering me that extra moral support, that I would perhaps not get if I was just secretive about it.
That’s the big takeaway I would like my readers to have… being open, transparent, and vulnerable can be very powerful. Perhaps I was also at a point in my career where I had the confidence that I could control my destiny and situation and didn’t need to hide (hence openly talking to the world thru this blog and sharing these on LinkedIn now). While others who are early in their careers may struggle with protecting themselves in a different manner… hopefully, readers can think and analyze the situation more carefully based on my learning and make the decision best for them.
And the readers of the blog who are in leadership positions, I hope you can drive positive change in corporate environments to enable such openness as a culture by using personal examples since that is the most powerful way to set the tone of any culture.
What has all this done for us?
This can be a phenomenally long list and it keeps getting longer and longer through our journey. But let me attempt to capture the essence of it since it’s topical here, and may delve into a few more specifics in the future:
- Right from the start, we got tremendous social support in managing the 1st chemo treatment journey (4 months). From getting special home-cooked meals delivered every week, to frequent social visits (as allowed based on my immunity status), extended family always being here for the chemo days +/-1, the list is long. It showed us that the village is with us, and we are not dealing with this alone. We are still beneficiaries of getting wonderful home-cooked meals delivered to us from time to time, as it’s a long ongoing journey.
- Lots of visits from out-of-town friends to come and see us… from all around the country. Ability to reconnect with people at a different level. The time and effort put in by friends just to be with us for a few days from time to time have been amazing and therapeutic.
- On any given week, usually, someone around the world is checking on us to see how things are. Coffee, lunch or just a walk with a local friend are commonplace individually for both Monika and I. Connections to so many people have become so much more meaningful now and less transactional. This includes personal friends to work colleagues alike.
- Introduction to the impact of diet and lifestyle on harnessing the amazing self-healing ability of our bodies. A close friend deep into this went the extra mile to do so much research into this for us and shared tremendous resources. From there on we have discovered and learned a lot more about it through many others. I can confidently say that this has been a tremendous positive help in how I have tolerated all the toxic cancer treatments to date. I am a transformed person now in how I think of foods and lifestyle for managing my health, and over time I have become vegan as well for health reasons. Good starting resources are: “Eat to Beat Disease: The New Science of How Your Body Can Heal Itself” and “How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease”. Lot more on this and sharing of additional resources in a future blog.
- Introduction to topics in life that I was curious about, but had not immersed myself — like spirituality, yoga, meditation, etc. I had 3 or more copies of Bhagavad Gita at home collecting dust on the bookshelf, but a friend recommended a specific version that I started with and loved it. “The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough for Westerners” is a great way to get introduced to this powerful philosophy of life for anyone of any age and culture, and explore further. Good mental health and mindset are a very critical part of this journey. The list of spiritual support and materials is very long and may cover later.
- Managing a flexible work schedule, getting support all around me where I never felt that my disease or disability was getting in the way of results that my team or I were accountable for. It made work more meaningful as a new human side got attached to it, and I gained a lot of new personal friends in the process.
And the list can just go on and on… but most important is that by being open and honest about our situation, we have gained a tremendous amount and benefited immensely from the support vs. if we did not take this approach. Not just our direct network, but the network’s network has stepped up to help us in any way they can, and I cannot even count the number of prayers that continue to be offered regularly on our behalf — in people’s hearts, temples, and churches alike, and even special places of worship that people visit, like Jerusalem.
We are just grateful!
I would love to hear your opinions and experiences on the topic… what has worked for you or not worked for you, and what you have valued. There is no right or wrong here, it’s just what works for you individually, and sharing your experience will further benefit me and others.
