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When do you tell your employer about cancer?

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Posted 9/29/2017 3:23 AM (GMT 0)
So ... my uPSA continues to rise less than 1 year after surgery...

Looks like I'll have to get SRT ... and I'm not sure about HT ...

Regardless ... I've heard that it can make your tired and also could impact work performance...

Has anyone told their employer about cancer due to SE's from salvage/adj. RT ?

Should I wait to see how the SE's are before I say anything? ...

Thanks.

Zzarth / Fred
Posted 9/29/2017 3:32 AM (GMT 0)
Well that sucks, ZZarth.
Just my humble opinion, I wouldn't say anything unless and until I found treatment interfering with work, and put me in a position that I was forced to.
Hopefully your employer will be understanding.
Good luck. I hope against hope that your PSA goes back down
Posted 9/29/2017 3:47 AM (GMT 0)
Don't say anything until the SE affect your work. Then have a conversation about reasonable accommodation.

Andrew
Posted 9/29/2017 4:40 AM (GMT 0)
It depends on a few factors. Are you performing well, do you have a good relationship with your sup, do you work for a company that values their employees? My previous employer was great....super understanding. Had surgery and they had their own disability ins. I had 3 wks or some out with full pay. While still recovering I was poached. After getting an offer, I laid it on the line and told the hiring manager. He was super understanding....his mom has stage 4b. I only found out later his mom is married to the owner of the company. I am so thankful for many things, and my employers understanding a belief in me are but 2. I got my Ct mapping done yesterday and will start SRT on the 16th. He's already scaled back my work load.

Sorry, didn't mean to be such a flapper. Tell them as much or as little as you think appropriate, but it will definitely help if you are in good standing. If not, don't tell them jack and utilize your lunch hour as much as you can for treatments. If they star giving you a hard time, communicate in email to document for any claim you might be entitled to.
Posted 9/29/2017 12:33 PM (GMT 0)
Zzarth - There are two perspectives that impact this decision. First, the legal aspects. I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it, you are not required to tell your employer about your medical situation until or unless it impacts your work. Even then, it may not be legally required, but as the others have mentioned, if you need your employer to make any sort of accommodation for you to work at a reduced level, you will have to explain why.

Second, there is the perspective of what is right for you. Sort of a moral consideration. If your employer depends heavily upon you and there is nobody who can pick up the slack if your pace falters, you may want to have a discussion with them sooner rather than later.

I am incredibly lucky in this, especially the latter consideration, as my immediate superior (company president) is a PCa survivor, and has served as a bit of a mentor in the earlier phases of my treatment decision process.

Yet another consideration is that your choices of further treatment may be many, and some of them may have more or fewer side effects than others. For example, if you are able to consider SBRT for SRT (IIRC, TA has cited a clinical trial of this), I would bet that other than a few short absences from work for treatments, there might be little or no impact on your work capabilities. ADT can have varied impacts on different individuals, but I've not read of many that were impacted profoundly enough to impact their work.

It sucks that you are where you are, but I believe it won't be as noticeable to others as it is to you.
Posted 9/29/2017 12:58 PM (GMT 0)
I work for a large company that has a sickness and health plan i have kept my managers in the loop from day one that seems to be the best policy in the area i work. The biggest hassle is trying to keep up with all the b.s. Paperwork from corporate but if i want to keep getting benefits don't have much choice.

Larry
Posted 9/29/2017 1:16 PM (GMT 0)
After my diagnosis, I was on the fence on whether I should notify any particular person or department of my condition. Even though I was not facing immediate treatment, I am in a managerial position and I travel quite regularly.

I was concerned about the need for treatment coming up quickly, and then facing a situation such as "Yeah, those departmental meetings in three weeks? Yeah, I can't make them" or "Yeah, that very important conference in Chicago at which I'm presenting? Yeah, I have to cancel that" -- I wanted someone in the company to know ahead of time that if situations such as these arose, it wasn't because I just decided to take a last minute vacation or arbitrarily blow off a responsibility.

I decided to tell my HR director the current situation so that if I did have to make some quick treatment decisions that would affect my attention to my job, the reason would be established, and HR could have the logistics/paperwork ready to roll.

As my diagnosis has no immediate effect on my job or responsibilities, I felt no reason to discuss it with my superiors, direct reports, or colleagues at this point.
Posted 9/29/2017 1:49 PM (GMT 0)
I was an open book with my employer and can't think of a reason not to be. It sure makes it easier to leave for doc appointments when they know what's going on.

There were no questions asked when I wore shorts for five weeks due to having the cath in that long...
Posted 9/29/2017 2:10 PM (GMT 0)
I'm a free-lancer in a business where there's absolutely zero job security and people are being replaced on a whim. So I waited till the very last minute to tell me supervisor. The support was incredible. She offered to have somebody drive me to and from radiation treatments (which wasn't necessary) and guaranteed that my job would be there if I needed to take a few weeks off. My point is: I think in most cases people will be very understandable to what you're dealing with. If not, the company you're working for may not be the best place to be in.
Posted 9/29/2017 2:18 PM (GMT 0)
The support at my company was great. I alerted my supervisor only and asked for confidentiality for the wider team. Worked well. My friend who did SRT told me he tolerated it very well and was not tired. Except the very last week. Then he was tired.
Posted 9/29/2017 2:57 PM (GMT 0)
I told my boss because I thought I would be on ADT by now. She has been super supportive. We've discussed ways we can deal with it, if/when the ADT slows me down. I'm very grateful for my boss's support.
Posted 9/29/2017 4:58 PM (GMT 0)
I told my boss at my last company. I got support, concern, and never received another raise, promotion or assignment to new a team - because they didn't want to stress me out. In the end I had to move to another company to keep my career on track.

Andrew
Posted 9/29/2017 6:47 PM (GMT 0)
When diagnosed I was working for a small company but had a great relationship with the owner. At that time we had 7 employees but when I started it was 3. Never an issue with time off for any reason. But then I am on AS so did not have some of the issues many have. Am now voluntarily retired.
Posted 9/29/2017 9:56 PM (GMT 0)
As a few people have said, it depends on your personal situate. Are you a valued employee or one that is worried about losing his job?
Most employers will go the extra mile for a valued employee. If you are just filling time at work it will be just one more mark against you.
I've seen and made decisions along the whole spectrum, from paying 100% for a heart transplant for an hourly worker to letting someone go.
Posted 9/29/2017 10:19 PM (GMT 0)
I informed my superiors about my reemergence of cancer. But it didn't affect my busy work schedule one bit. I scheduled my 39 salvage treatments in the afternoon, so I can swing by the radiation center on my way home from work. I never experience any side effects during or after being nuked, so once again it didn't interfere with work.
Posted 9/30/2017 2:34 AM (GMT 0)
Zzarth,
It may depend on what kind of work you do and on the personalities involved, but I think most employers and most people will go out of their way to be accommodating. When I needed SRT I had a very poor relationship with my boss. He wasn't the person who had hired me -- there had been several mergers and reorganizations in between and he had inherited a department (including me) he clearly didn't understand. However even before I needed SRT I often worked at home whenever we were most desperate -- when I knew I couldn't afford to lose two hours behind a windshield that would be better spent at my desk at home when we needed to pull out stops to meet an insane deadline.

So I told him up front that I needed SRT and planned to work at home throughout but also to keep up my normal workload. We didn't like each other, but he knew that I had always been good for whatever it took to roll the rock up the hill. I arranged with the hospital to have my SRT sessions at 8:30 in the morning and was able to be back home at my desk and online with my computer and on conference calls for work by 9:30 or 10 and then through a normal workday which, when deadlines demanded, might be until after midnight for many consecutive days.

SE's were not an issue for me. Some say they have fatigue from SRT, but I didn't. Or maybe I just no longer knew what fatigue was thanks to the nature of my job. After week 6 or so I started having urinary urgency when I first stood up. Being at home 15 feet from the bathroom was a plus. But if I'd had to work at the office I could have managed the hike to the men's room -- though I'd have been less inclined to work the late hours there that I was willing to work at home.

If anything, I'd say my experience was my boss was cooperative and accommodating, and for my part, I made sure to hold up my end as well or better than I always had.
Jim
Posted 10/1/2017 1:06 AM (GMT 0)
The majority of my work is representing employees in employment disputes, including lots of disability discrimination. Unfortunately, not all employers are as understanding as some of those mentioned here are. I've seen shocking treatment of employees with cancer and the lengths some employers will go to get a "sick" employee off the payroll. Some of these employers are even health institutions.

If your company has over 50 employees, you're probably eligible for intermittent Family Medical Leave Act leave. This will enable you to take fractional days off for radiation if you need it.

Most employees are also entitled to a reasonable accommodation, which can be in addition to FMLA leave. You don't have to tell your employer what your disability is, only the nature of the accommodation you are requesting. The employer can ask that establish that it is medically necessary, in which case a note from your doctor stating that your request is medically necessary is sufficient. The doctor need not disclose anything about your condition itself.

Ideally, your employer is supportive and understanding. You're in the best position to evaluate that. Be realistic, however, as I've seen to many long term employees devastated by the lack of loyalty from their large corporate employers.

Hope that helps.
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