This episode’s about telling clients, partners, and vendors about a cancer diagnosis — not your boss, not your colleagues. How I read someone before I decide, what I actually say, why “incurable” goes in on purpose, and why I still wonder whether I say too much.

Episode Transcript

Hey, everyone. I hope you are doing fabulous today.

I want to talk about sharing a cancer diagnosis or sharing that we’re living with a chronic kind of cancer in the workplace, but not in the workplace like I’ve done an episode on do you tell your boss, do you tell your colleagues? I work in a client-oriented environment, and I want to talk about telling your clients or your partners, your vendors, others that you work with.

The Friday Meeting Dilemma

And this is because I’ve had this come up several times and I don’t think I have 100% clear approach to it, but there are things that, maybe I’ve experienced or am continuing to experience that you might find yourself in that situation or you might even have a solution. But this all kind of resulted in my thinking about this a little bit more deeply from…

It’s been some time. I had a client who wanted to meet with me on Friday morning, standing meeting, right? Every week. Perfectly valid reasons for it. And in a client-facing position, where someone is paying your business or your organization money for your time, it can be really difficult to say, “No, I I can’t,” or, “I’d rather not,” right?

Because I was in the light box on those days, and between where I live, where I work, and where I get treatment in the doctor’s office, I couldn’t really fit in that time and still get treatment, right? I would’ve had to forgo my treatment, which is a a line I don’t wanna cross in the workplace, right?

So I had to decide pretty quickly whether to tell this particular client a real reason why as opposed to just a no. Now I told this client all of it, you know, my sort of quick down and dirty strange, incurable kind of thing in just a few seconds. But I wanna talk about this ’cause I think it’s important.

Most all of my clients, I think, fully know that I have cancer. They know that it’s in, incurable. They know that it’s chronic, I guess is the way I would say it. They probably, most of them, forget about it until they see a post that I may have made on LinkedIn or, something may have come up where I couldn’t do something and I shared it with them.

It’s not a secret. I’m on the foundation board for the Cutaneous Lymphoma Foundation. I’ve gone and done legislative advocacy at the federal and state level and shared that with people. I obviously have a podcast, right? About where I am and how I manage cancer. I’m pretty, pretty out loud about it, right?

Reading the Client

But I do wonder, is that always the best approach, or am I oversharing in these instances? So when I have these things come up, and actually really before I have these situations come up, I always have this question running underneath, and it really comes through how I look at a client and how I think they may feel about my calendar and my time relative to what they’ve paid for.

And are they someone who, in this example, if they wanna schedule on a Friday and I tell them, “No can we do an alternate time?” Is this client someone who’s gonna say “she’s really not that flexible”? And is that going to get said in a room I’m not in? And is it going to impact how they feel about the service that they’re buying from the agency I work for, the business that I work for?

And if I’m really worried about that, if I think they will th- decide that I’m being difficult, then I’m definitely going to lean into a sharing. But if I don’t think they’re going to be in that space, if they’re gonna be like, “Okay, that’s fine, we can find another time,” then I don’t need to go there, right?

They don’t ever really find out unless it comes up in another way. We might work together for some time. And I’m not avoiding it, it’s just, it’s not relevant, right? I don’t need to be telling people things that might, think that they might interpret as being weird if it’s purposeless, right?

What’s the goal of it, right? And I think that’s something that can get left out of conversations about disclosure. We talk about disclosure oftentimes as it’s one decision I’ve decided I’m disclosing it. I’m sharing it with everyone else. And it isn’t like that at all. It’s really 100 really small decisions.

You kinda gotta make ’em fast mostly on incomplete information about people that, at least in my instance, I’m still figuring out when I have a new client or a new relationship. And the criteria honestly has almost nothing to do with how close we are in our working relationships. So this is one part that I don’t think I’ve really spent a lot of time on And it can be a little bit exhausting.

It’s certainly hidden among those with some kind of chronic illness, and it’s learning people well enough to guess how they’ll take what you’re going to tell them or what you’re gonna share with them, right? So I am trying to understand what someone wants, not from me specifically necessary, but from the whole working arrangement.

And, what are they under pressure about? Who are they trying to impress? Is this a person whose calendar is the way they hold their life together? Is it a person who’s flexible and just hadn’t thought about it? Do they treat the people working for them as people or really as a capacity? And I can get a lot of things, get a lot of that from things that have nothing to do with me, and that could be through how they talk about their own team, whether they’ve ever moved anything for anybody how they communicate about their working style, and even what happens really the first time something small goes wrong.

Do they get curious when something goes wrong, or do they get sharp? And that’s really important, that sharpness. If someone has a sharpness to them, I might approach things a little bit differently. And none of that really is on a list anywhere. It’s not a process that I’m running. I’m doing the thing everythi- everyone does with everybody, which is forming an impression, except mine has a specific job to do, and I’ve got real money riding on getting it right.

And sure, I get it wrong or at least I think I get it wrong sometimes. I’m human. There might be people I’ve categorized as being less flexible, right? Who would’ve been completely fine, and I’ve never found that out because I never gave them the chance, and that’s really the cost of the whole system, and I just don’t have a fix for it. So of all the things that have happened, and I’ve decided that the person I’m working with actually is a person who needs to know. I’m gonna share with you what I say in general terms.

What I Say

And not really a cleaned-up version. It’s not super smooth. Someone might say, “Hey, let’s go back to that, Can we meet on Friday mornings at 9:00 AM?” And my response is gonna be essentially “No, I can’t. I haven’t mentioned this, and just don’t freak out, but I do have a standing medical treatment I can’t change at that time.

I do have a rare, incurable lymphoma. It’s not gonna kill me, but there are specific treatments I have to take, and I just can’t rearrange them. And when they change, absolutely, we can revisit because they often do change.” Now, there are a few things to unpack into this space, and the first thing is, “I can’t,” right?

Before any of the explanation, right? That’s important because if I lead with the reason, it almost sounds like I’m building a case and it sounds almost like I’m positioning myself to be evaluated. I’m making clear that everyone understands the answer is already decided. Now, in my instance, if that didn’t work and a client says that’s not acceptable,” then I would need to work with my boss on how we address acceptability.

I can tell you personally I can’t change when I have a treatment a- especially in the real world. Our treatment and appointments are often legislated. We don’t really have a lot of choice in that. So that could come to, someone else having to take on my client or do that work or I’ll even go here.

We work with who we wanna work with. If someone is not nice to work with, maybe we don’t wanna work with them. But anyway I do say, “Don’t freak out,” and I- You know, people notice this one. I really do want to deescalate as, as I initially disclose, right? I hand them kind of the reaction I want before they’ve had a chance to pick their own, and it might be a little bit bossy.

I would like to call it being very direct. Experience has told me that it helps to make people not panic, right? Most people hearing medical news from someone they do not know are unsure how big a deal they’re supposed to make of it, and I’d rather tell them than watch them try and guess.

And then when I talk about having this strange lymphoma, right? Lymphoma is a scary word. Incurable is a scary word. Ongoing. And I tell them it’s chronic, and I tell them it’s incurable because I don’t want them to fall into the societal trap of thinking, “Oh, you have it, you’ll be treated, and it’ll be over with, so this is a short-term situation.”

This is the rest of my life, right? And I’d rather say it in a sentence directly as opposed to having someone get there later. I do lead with, “It won’t kill me,” which is, pretty much accurate at my stage and where I am. It it really it’s incurable and not fatal are both true, right?

But without the sentence before it that says, “Hey, it’s not likely to kill me,” people’s brains start thinking about, “Oh my gosh, what does this mean?” And depending on how they feel about their situation what does this mean for me, right? Not me, Kelly, but me, the client, right? How does this affect the job I’ve hired someone to do if this person is in this space, right?

And I share when my treatment changes. We can obviously revisit, and that might matter most in a sense because my treatment does change all the time. I don’t want them to permanently think, Friday is not available. Six months later, Friday might be very available the way treatment goes.

But I want them to understand it’s very flexible. And it’s not an easy conversation to have when you tell someone this because everything about cancer and the word cancer or the word lymphoma comes with what that person sitting across from you has ever known about cancer. So it’s about their mother.

It’s about a coworker. It’s about a, a walk they did once, and I don’t get any say in that, and I don’t understand what accurate or inaccurate information they may have. 

Preconceptions About Cancer

And I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about. So I had a f- a friend and a colleague who had breast cancer, and was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she had, children at home teenagers maybe 10, 12, in that range at the time.

And she and her husband had told them when she’d had her cancer diagnosis, and everything was fine. They understood it. Mom was gonna get treatment. These are the things that might happen, so on and so forth, highly curable, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they thought everything was fine, and they were at a baseball game or a softball game or something, kids sports, and there are other parents and stuff around and one of the other parents asked how she was doing and how treatment for this very specific type of cancer was going, and it was breast cancer.

And her daughter was sitting nearby, and her daughter turned immediately and said, “You didn’t say it was breast cancer. People die from breast cancer.” Now this is a, a young person, right? Who you had a couple of parents who thought they did a great job telling their kid about their cancer, but the child had already formed an opinion about breast cancer versus a cancer wasn’t breast cancer, and decided it was really bad.

And, my friend and colleague had to, of course, address that with her child, and everything is fine, and she’s, been many years without breast cancer. But it’s– that’s the kind of preconceived idea that someone can come to a conversation with, right? I’ve got limited options, and there are options, and every option has a pro and a con.

I could say it’s skin cancer, but it’s not skin cancer. It’s not accurate. Mycosis fungoides is a lymphoma. It does show up on the skin. Generally if someone starts having a conversation with me about it, some people, I tell them, “It’s okay if you have questions. You can ask.”

I’m very publ- I always tell them I’m very public about this so that they don’t feel uncomfortable. And so I might, share something about it. I could say a skin condition, but my concern with the skin condition seems like I could be a little bit more flexible in my appointments, right?

I could say light therapy, for example, and let them fill in the rest. They might think I’m going to a spa or maybe I’m doing something very homeopathic as opposed to something that’s, life-sustaining. So it’s it’s an interesting balance of trying to put accurate information out front without sounding overly complex, without sounding like, oh my gosh, I’m not gonna be here to help you, or I’m being difficult.

And it’s an interesting struggle for me to figure out how to say that right and for all the different people that I work with. Now, doing this can be awkward, especially if you’re just starting out doing it. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I have been living with this since 2015, and I am also a very direct person.

And, my directness when people first start working with me, can make them think a little bit, right? Sometimes they may recalibrate when I tell them something. I’m not emotional when I tell them things, right? And when you tell someone directly and they’re, you’re not saying, “Hey, I’d like to have a conversation with you.

There’s something I need to share with you that’s really important,” right? If you’re not doing all of this sort of stuff on the front end and you’re just jumping into it, there’s a little bit of a beat right after you tell them where they’re recalibrating, right? ‘Cause I’ve handed them something completely unexpected in the conversation, and I handed it over very fast.

And, they might say something a little clumsy. They might not, but usually they say, “Oh hopefully, all will be okay. Thank you for telling me,” whatever. “I can certainly be flexible.” I’ve never actually had anyone say, “No I need that time at that very specific time.

Can you make it work?” And it’s okay if they tell me that because then you know what we’d do? We’d find out how we make that time work for a client. It may not be me that’s available at that time, but it… And it may be someone else that could pick up for that. So that’s something also to keep in mind.

And I keep that close when I’m telling someone because I worry about causing them stress, and I worry about making them think things are worse than they are. Th- this is just, this is everyday life for me. This is how I live. This is how I continue to work. This is how I contribute to the world, right?

And I don’t think I’ve lost a client at all over this but I’m not sure if I did if they’d tell me that I lost over it. But I, I think most people are “Okay, all right,” and then they realize, I’m still there doing business, contributing what they need in order for them to be successful in their business.

Disclosure as Risk

I do wanna say one important thing here. I can do this, Because I’m the person in the room rather than the person behind the person. And what I mean is my employer has never made my treatment schedule a problem, right? When I s- share a constraint, it’s a constraint. It’s not a request someone has to approve.

So if you were to take that away, for example, if I didn’t have the authority and the autonomy to say no to a client when they ask for a specific time, then it could be a very difficult situation, right? If you’re hourly disclosure is not a scheduling conversation, it’s a risk. If you’re junior or new or maybe you’re the most replaceable person on the team during a tough economic time period, it could be a liability to share that you have the situation and it is interrupting your work that can be a really hard no for some employers.

And I think back to when I was legislating at the North Carolina State Capitol this year and speaking with the majority whip about rare diseases. This is at the Senate, and I met with met with… She’s actually my local senator. And talking about rare disease, and I was sharing about how I have these 150 doctor’s appointments a year because of Monday, Wednesday, Friday having to drive in and get treatment.

And she was like, “How do you work?” And it’s a great comment and, I work because I have one, a flexible type of job. I have an employer who completely understands it. But how does someone work? And it a question that’s sitting out there. How can people work when employers can’t work around that or choose not to work around that?

If you’re running a, let’s just say a factory line, you can’t run your factory line if one element is missing at that time. It shuts the whole thing down. How do you staff for that? How do you make it work? How do you accommodate someone that needs accommodation and still accomplish the task of making the product that you’re trying to make or creating the service that you’re trying to make?

And it’s very difficult, and I don’t have an answer for it. It’s something that I think is very hard for there to be, one answer for, right? Flexibility might be offering a lot of part-time shifts. Can you afford to be part-time? Are you eligible for health insurance at part-time?

A lot of us in our environments cannot be without health insurance, so we have to work a certain number of hours to be eligible for health insurance with our employers, right? So there are a lot of things in there around sharing information, and I often wonder, I’ve never asked any of my clients this maybe one day I will, but sometimes I wonder, did I really have to say that or should I have just said no?

I don’t have an answer for it. It’s a question that I’m not sure I’ll ever have an answer for unless, someone tells me, “Hey, whoa, that’s TMI,” too much information. “You didn’t need to do that. You could have just said no.” I haven’t had that happen, but I wonder if people have thought that.

No Framework, Just a Question

So I don’t have a framework. I really don’t. What I have is a question that I run into two seconds before I open my mouth, and it’s not really how much I should say. I guess my, my whole, whole thought at that point is this going to be a problem here or not when I say no? And then I live with not knowing whether I read them right, which is what I do most days anyway.