A Call to Care - Cancer Today

Caregivers for cancer patients find themselves playing a complex and vital role as care shifts from the hospital to the home.
By Kate Yandell

Christy Leonard had to learn fast in the weeks after her husband, Tony, was diagnosed with stage IIIC stomach cancer at age 39 in 2012. The Fayetteville, North Carolina, resident learned to give Tony injections to prevent blood clotting and to operate a feeding tube following surgery. During his chemotherapy and radiation treatments, she juggled her information technology job with caring for Tony and their four children—they have five—still living at home. She had no time to reflect on her role.

“I didn’t even know what a caregiver was,” Leonard, now 36 years old, recalled during a panel discussion at a National Institute of Nursing Research caregiving conference in August 2017. “I showed up at an event and they said, ‘Oh, you’re his caregiver.’ I said, ‘Sure.’”

About 39.8 million people in the U.S. provide unpaid care for adults annually. 

Of these, at least 2.8 million care for people whose primary problem is cancer, according to the 2016 report Cancer Caregiving in the U.S., produced by the National Alliance for Caregiving. But caregivers’ needs are often overlooked by health care professionals, policy makers and even caregivers themselves, who tend to neglect their own psychological and medical care.

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