1. There are two ways to handle communications. If you’re a private person you may want to consider not telling anyone but your spouse/significant other. If you tell one other person the information will be out there in the wild and it will spread.

2. The other option is complete and utter disclosure. Give regular updates with all of the information you know and try to head off unnecessary questions that distract you from the things you need to worry about.

Family and friends are worried about you. This leads them to ask questions you couldn’t possibly know the answer to. They don’t mean any harm but it’s distracting and can put your head in a place it shouldn’t be. With my military experience and since I prefer to be direct I settled on the second option. Once I realized people were asking duplicate questions on subjects I didn’t know the answer to, I setup an email distribution list consisting of family, friends and coworkers that I thought wanted or needed updates. The list grew as people requested to be added.

Every time I received information on when my appointments were scheduled, prognosis, or treatment I sent out an update. I specifically wrote at the beginning and at the end, “This is what I know right now, no more and no less.” I would also include the contents of my previous emails below the new information so it would remind them of what they’d been told and reinforce that I wasn’t holding anything back. When someone would inevitably ask about something that wasn’t in my email I would gently tell them they knew everything I knew and I wasn’t holding anything back. This quickly broke them of the habit and allowed me to focus on other things. You have to be completely disciplined with this process. If you give someone any bit of information out of the normal channel they will always expect additional intelligence.

I highly recommend you go for option 2 and follow my example. This has worked very well for me. Just remember that you have to be disciplined with the information and how you deal with people. Remember these are the people that care about you but you have other things you need to be worrying about. You need to be focused on yourself and your treatment