[By Elisa Becze, BA, ELS, ONS Staff Writer]

The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship’s (NCCS’s) Cancer Survival Toolbox® is a free audio program that teaches skills that can help people with cancer meet the challenges of their illness. In addition to basic skills such as finding information, making decisions, solving problems, negotiating, and standing up for your rights, the toolkit also includes special topics like end of life and caring for the caregiver.

Now, patients and survivors living with chronic lymphocytic leukemia or chronic myelogenous leukemia have a resource specifically designed to address their needs and offer practical tools they can use in their daily life as they deal with a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Written by cancer survivors and healthcare professionals, these new programs allow people to listen to scenarios inspired by true stories of real cancer survivors and learn how to get solutions to many common problems faced during a cancer diagnosis. The topics addressed are side effects and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment, coping with change, and caregiver issues.

These new resources are part of a suite of programs, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that also includes Living With Multiple Myeloma and Living With Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. All blood cancer programs are available to stream and download at www.canceradvocacy.org/living-with-cancer/disease-specific.

The Journey Forward website also has survivorship resources for both healthcare providers and survivors.

  • The Journey Forward Survivorship Care Plan Builder is for healthcare providers to create care plans to give to patients as they wrap up their cancer care.
  • My Care Plan is for patients to use if they have not received a care plan from their provider.