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Keeping On the Career Path with Ovarian Cancer

Ovarian cancer strikes at an inconvenient time. It is not scheduled and it will not abide by your workload. In the same vein, its treatment cannot be fit in and made to complement your work schedule, presentation or business trip. Instead, you are left to redefine your job, your identity as a worker, and - if you are on a career path - your way of moving up.

Keeping on the career path with ovarian cancer is hard but not impossible. Even though there truly never is a convenient time to undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatments, there are ways to deal with schedules, tight business deadlines, and also the stress brought on by work and the disease.

* Whenever possible, schedule your treatments for Friday evenings (after work). This offers you the opportunity to recuperate over the weekend. If this evening is not an option, try for an evening after work, when you know the next day will not be busy or stressful.

* Discuss with your boss or partners whether there is a chance that you could telecommute. With the advances in technology that now permit for virtual meetings and real time discussions via the Internet you may actually become instrumental in ushering in a new era for your job! This move may actually save the company thousands of dollars in annual travel costs. Offer to be the guinea pig for this technology.

* Learn to delegate. On the career path the ability to delegate is essential and even if before you large undertook most of the tasks yourself, now is a good time to change this approach and instead begin handing off tasks that do not require your attention to others. You may consider reviewing the finished product and then asking those to whom you delegated it to make any changes if necessary.

Keeping on the career path with ovarian cancer inevitably begs the question whether or not you should let your coworkers and partners know about the disease. While this is your choice, it will provide a backdrop against which to address your requests and you may find that those above you in the company hierarchy are more willing to listen and let you try new things than if you simply begin requesting a lot of changes in the way business is being done.

You may opt to keep your illness restricted to those individuals who have a need to know, and you may also choose to keep the exact nature of your cancer private. As a matter of fact, many workers suggest keeping the information as generic as possible so as to not be subjected to endless stories of someone's uncle, aunt, or other family member who underwent a similar treatment. Of course, if you do not mind listening to endless family tales that are sometimes also accompanied with more thoughtless statements, in particular when they refer to death, dying and unpleasant personal events then it is up to you just how open and specific you wish to be.