Caregivers and Family

Lisa Sylvest knew cancer ran in her family. Her father had been treated for colon cancer in 1992, but before that, many relatives on her father’s side faced the disease in their 50s: her grandmother from Denmark, an uncle and an aunt. This is her story of tracking this history of cancer.

Getting -- or sharing -- the news of a cancer diagnosis is one of the most difficult experiences anyone can go through. While it is different if you're the doctor, the patient or the caregiver, open and honest communication is the key to helping each other make the best decisions.

Photographs capture moments in meaningful ways. Thanks to a new Complementary Therapies Program, patients and their family members can have portraits taken at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center.

Cancer breeds questions. At the U-M Rogel Cancer Center, we face tough questions every day - in our clinics, our laboratories, our classrooms and our community - and we know we're only as good as our latest answer. In this "Frequently Asked Questions," we explore an aspect of cancer diagnosis and treatment too often overlooked: taking care of the caregiver.

Because cancer affects everyone in a family, the U-M Rogel Cancer Center now offers Families Facing Cancer, a program dedicated to helping children of all ages who have a parent or other adult family member diagnosed with the disease. The program is funded through the generosity of donors.

When Carol Rugg was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1997, her fiancé Richard Montmorency thought they'd gotten the "in sickness" part of their marriage out of the way early. Rugg fought the disease with Montmorency as her caregiver, an experience they did not expect to repeat as the years passed with no recurrence.