For many cancer survivors, completing an intensive treatment course is only one step along the long road to recovery.

What people sometimes do not understand, according to cancer expert Christopher Fosker, is that survivors continue to face challenges as they readjust to a life after cancer.

Dr Fosker will be offering advice on how patients can “carry on with their normal lives” while undergoing treatment and after successfully finishing surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, at a public meeting tomorrow.

“There’s a lot of research done into cancer diagnosis, cancer treatments and there’s an increasing body of interest and work done into what’s termed the survivorship of cancer patients, which is how you manage to live your life afterwards,” oncologist Dr Fosker, who works with the Bermuda Hospitals Board, the Bermuda Cancer and Health Centre, and the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Centre in Boston, told The Royal Gazette.

“But it’s not very well understood, it’s often not talked about and it’s often one of the biggest challenges for patients; they get through a very intensive patch of treatment, whether its surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, and they can sometimes feel quite lost afterwards.”

Dr Fosker said the presentation ties in with the announcement that BCHC had teamed up with BHB and the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Centre to offer a radiation therapy initiative on the island.

“The hope is that we will have radiation here within the year and a lot of patients having radiation feel well, so one of the challenges is going to be keeping people at work and getting people back to work afterwards,” Dr Fosker said.

According to Dr Fosker, the most common cancers treated with radiation are breast and prostate cancer, and while this treatment “undoubtedly can be horrible”, “a lot of the time it’s very straightforward”. Being able to get treatment locally will not only allow patients to “carry on their normal lives”, it will also avoid a loss of earnings, he added.

“Most patients having radiation for breast and prostate cancers will feel well enough to work and most of them want to work because it’s a matter of trying to feel normal and carry on your life despite the fact you’ve had to go through a really difficult diagnosis,” he said.

Dr Fosker added that one of the biggest challenges patients who travel overseas for treatment face is finding something to fill the time between treatments, which can take as little as 10 minutes for radiation.

“Because you’re feeling well, that leaves you a whole day with nothing to do.

“So you do spend a lot of time thinking about your diagnosis, thinking about your cancer and being quite challenged by it. So from the patient’s perspective, just to be normal is very important.

“There is science that shows that people who are able to carry on their normal activities get less side-effects and there’s actually a study published at the end of last week that shows that patients who have good social support have a better chance of being cured of cancer.”

The presentation “Coping with Cancer in the Workplace” is aimed at getting a conversation going about some of the challenges faced by patients and survivors.

“The motivation behind it is to engage more with the general public and cancer patients and survivors about some of the challenges that happen after you’ve had your cancer treatment,” Dr Fosker said.

“The idea is that anyone can come along, whether you are someone that’s had cancer, you’re someone who cares about someone with cancer, or it’s someone you work with cancer, the idea is that hopefully we will be covering a lot of the different topics that affect different people and as much as anything, just start that conversation.”

But he stressed that the advice is often very tailored, with different people struggling with different problems.

“So talking about one solution is not possible,” he said. “But a lot of the times it comes down to having flexibility at work, having a good social support network, so good family and friends helping out.”

There will also be advice for people who work with cancer patients and survivors and may not know how to broach the subject, as well as dietary, nutrition and exercise advice, and a question and answer period.

The presentation at the Argus building in Hamilton starts at 6pm, while doors open at 5.30pm.