Speaker 1: That time and a Sunday where we chat to extraordinary Australians. Well,
Speaker 1: as we say, ordinary Australians doing extraordinary things. And today
Speaker 1: we're talking to Sue Woodhall. Now, Sue was in her
Speaker 1: late fifties. She was a high flyer in the public service,
Speaker 1: holding a senior position. It looked as though nothing would
Speaker 1: stop her. Then one day along comes that awful breast cancer.
Speaker 1: She tried to negotiate pathway back to work after going
Speaker 1: through treatment and the like, but as a full extent
Speaker 1: of well symptoms following treatment became clear, those hopes seemingly disappeared.
Speaker 1: Eventually her employer made it clear that they couldn't hold
Speaker 1: the role open. Now, what she decided then, and this
Speaker 1: is what makes the people we speak to at this
Speaker 1: time on a Sunday so remarkable. What she wanted to
Speaker 1: do was to say this doesn't happen to anyone else.
Speaker 1: So she founded the ad Vicausey Group Live Work Cancer,
Speaker 1: a Britain organization supporting those negotiating their entry and exit
Speaker 1: from work around their diagnosis, while pushing businesses to show
Speaker 1: compassion to employees battling cancer. Let's find out more about
Speaker 1: the work and life of Sue. What all I'm delighted
Speaker 1: to say is on the line. Good morning, so thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your time. How's your health? I
Speaker 1: have to start there.
Speaker 2: Well, firstly, good morning, Luke, and thank you for the
Speaker 2: opportunity to chat with you this morning. Asolutely my health, well,
Speaker 2: it's good. I feel that cancer is not in my body,
Speaker 2: but we don't really know. We never really know. But
Speaker 2: I'm coming up from our fifth anniversary next month, so brilliant.
Speaker 2: I'm in a good place and I'm doing something that
Speaker 2: I'm really passionate about.
Speaker 3: Believe in it.
Speaker 2: I've got both a lived experience but the understanding from
Speaker 2: so much research into this area of when cancer arrives
Speaker 2: when we're working.
Speaker 1: This is again full credit to you. Firstly, I'm delighted
Speaker 1: to know that you're coming up to five years but
Speaker 1: turning into what was such a negative outcome in your
Speaker 1: life to turn it into what you're doing now is brilliant.
Speaker 1: So I'll remind people at the end of our chat
Speaker 1: to go to livework cancer dot com. Tell me what
Speaker 1: happened to your career if you can. How did you
Speaker 1: find yourself in the position where the career was just
Speaker 1: about done?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess, Luke. It starts with.
Speaker 2: Firstly the diagnosis, and then I've got a treatment plan
Speaker 2: from the oncologist which said two and a half years
Speaker 2: of at what they call active treatment, and then another
Speaker 2: sort of five to seven years of treatment because of
Speaker 2: the type of breast cancer I had. And so after
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of surgeries, five months of chemo
Speaker 2: radiation therapy and the first lot of the called targeted therapies,
Speaker 2: I felt that, yeah, twelve months I could probably start
Speaker 2: to consider returning to work. So developed a return to
Speaker 2: work plan which really needed to consider all of the
Speaker 2: side effects and some of the challenges for not just
Speaker 2: our buddies at work, but also our families, our friends
Speaker 2: to understand the real impact that the treatment imposes on us.
Speaker 2: And many of these are invisible.
Speaker 3: So the three that.
Speaker 2: I'll talk about this morning that probably made it very
Speaker 2: difficult in terms of just switching from not working to
Speaker 2: going back to work was what they call brain fog
Speaker 2: or chemo chemo brain. The technical term is cancer related
Speaker 2: cognitive impairment. Yes, and that basically I couldn't think I
Speaker 2: was one of the fortunate ones because I had income protection,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't fill up the income protection forms.
Speaker 1: So can I ask you this might be such a
Speaker 1: stupid question, Sue, but did you know could you understand
Speaker 1: what was going on? Was the impairment your ability not
Speaker 1: to complete the form or were you completely unattached from
Speaker 1: a sense of reality if.
Speaker 2: You will, Well, yeah, I like, you know, put your
Speaker 2: name here, your first name and then your second name.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get that right. I couldn't get the address
Speaker 2: in the right boxes. So what happens is and it
Speaker 2: doesn't happen to everyone that has chemo, and it depends
Speaker 2: on the type of chemo, and there's many different types.
Speaker 2: But for some of us, the chain in our cognition,
Speaker 2: our executive functioning is real, and it was.
Speaker 3: One of the side effects I had absolutely no idea about.
Speaker 2: I did expect the second one, which was fatigue and
Speaker 2: that sort of you do nothing in the day and
Speaker 2: you're exhausted, But the cognition issues were really front and center.
Speaker 2: So when I was thinking about returning to work, you know,
Speaker 2: I had to explain that meeting with ministers, meeting with secretaries, you.
Speaker 3: Know, fronting up.
Speaker 2: It was an audience of very senior public servants or
Speaker 2: suppliers or whomever. I wouldn't be able to do that.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to do it to the same
Speaker 2: level that I could do before my diagnosis. And it
Speaker 2: was a shock to me, and I think it was
Speaker 2: a learning for those around me, both at work and
Speaker 2: also in my friends and my family.
Speaker 3: And I was talking to a researcher who does a lot.
Speaker 2: Of work around cancer related cognitive impairment, Darren Haywood, and
Speaker 2: sort of said, well, why don't why don't we get
Speaker 2: told about this? And it's a really you know, it's
Speaker 2: a really important question that's we don't want to sort
Speaker 2: of frighten everyone. Say, well, if you have chemo, you may,
Speaker 2: you know, you may, your brain might sort of stop working.
Speaker 2: But the having the conversations with your cancer nurse, you're oncologist,
Speaker 2: your psychologist, they help you to understand that what you're
Speaker 2: experiencing is real and and also it's not You're not unique.
Speaker 1: You know, on one on one level, if a doctor's
Speaker 1: brave enough, well a doctor's not brave enough. But if
Speaker 1: doctor fronts you with the confronting news that they have
Speaker 1: discovered a tumor, then you would imagine that, I mean,
Speaker 1: if that's tough enough, But what follows should be the
Speaker 1: tough conversation about it just worries me that we say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a bit difficult to talk about and
Speaker 1: no you're not saying that, but you know this is
Speaker 1: not You can't just have certain aspects of the illness
Speaker 1: and the treatment. This is a whole box and dice.
Speaker 1: So what I what I want to understand to is
Speaker 1: in your workplace or with your employer, because you sound
Speaker 1: perfectly like the sort of person would say, well, if
Speaker 1: I've got a cognitive impairment, I can't be expected to make,
Speaker 1: you know, very big decisions. Well what do we want
Speaker 1: our employers to do? What? Where? Do they kind of
Speaker 1: miss the boat because it's equally wrong to say, well, sorry,
Speaker 1: you can't work anymore.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, look there's a few things. And let me
Speaker 2: say the outset that when I realized the impact on
Speaker 2: my work and then the inability, we tried to get
Speaker 2: a pathway back from me, but it.
Speaker 3: Just didn't didn't happen. Wasn't possible. They did their best.
Speaker 2: But once I started to get a bit of cognition
Speaker 2: back and I started to read some of the research,
Speaker 2: I then was able to walk in my boss's shoes,
Speaker 2: and I had been a leader and manager for many decades,
Speaker 2: and I felt that if I had been leading managing Sue,
Speaker 2: how would I have actually responded? And that was one
Speaker 2: of the AHA moments to set up Live Work Cancer.
Speaker 2: Because it's not my boss's fault, it's not even I mean,
Speaker 2: it's no one's fault. What we need is better advocacy
Speaker 2: and awareness of what are cancer experiences like, and that
Speaker 2: answers to answer your question, Luke, I mean, the first
Speaker 2: thing is don't make assumptions about what your friend, your colleague,
Speaker 2: your family members going to go through because there's so
Speaker 2: many different there's over one hundred different types of cancer.
Speaker 2: There's many many different subtypes. And if you make the
Speaker 2: assumption that I've got breast cancer, so my colleague who's
Speaker 2: just been diagnosed with breast cancer is going to go
Speaker 2: through the same experience, that's the first mistake. That's the
Speaker 2: first trip.
Speaker 3: And so it's.
Speaker 2: About understanding that cancer and its treatment and how our
Speaker 2: body responds.
Speaker 3: To all that treatment, that it is truly unique.
Speaker 2: So what workplaces need to do firstly to start the
Speaker 2: conversation about cant in the workplace because fifty percent of us,
Speaker 2: unfortunately will be will experience cancer, and somewhere around forty
Speaker 2: percent will be working when they're here their.
Speaker 3: Words, you've got cancer. So yeah.
Speaker 2: And then since two thousand, the number of people with
Speaker 2: that are diagnosed with cancer has nearly doubled. So it's
Speaker 2: a growing issue. It's a growing health condition, and we
Speaker 2: need to become more understanding and have greater awareness.
Speaker 3: The other thing that's really important.
Speaker 2: Luke, is to have flexible guidelines for managers and give
Speaker 2: the manager the ability to adapt them to the unique
Speaker 2: needs of each colleague. So it's not about you know,
Speaker 2: it's this way or the highway. It's sort of saying, Sue, well,
Speaker 2: she's told me that her executive functioning or her brain's
Speaker 2: not working as it used to, so we're probably going
Speaker 2: to need some different accommodations. But for somebody else, Joe,
Speaker 2: for example, he's had a chemo, but his brain's working well,
Speaker 2: he tells me.
Speaker 3: That he's not.
Speaker 2: He's he understands his capacity, he understands his capability, so
Speaker 2: we can continue to get him back into a similar role, etc.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's really important is training training manager
Speaker 2: and leaders how to respond with compassion, not just empathy.
Speaker 2: Empathy and action. That's what compassion is, so that they're
Speaker 2: trained and prepared for the person that comes in and
Speaker 2: says they've got cancer. And workplaces have made some amazing
Speaker 2: inroads into support for people with mental health.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, she's absolutely.
Speaker 2: And now I think most workplaces have really solid parental
Speaker 2: supportive environments, safe work environments. But when we're talking about
Speaker 2: a chronic illness, we lack the training and we lack
Speaker 2: the I guess what we call reasonable adjustments inside the workplace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think there's I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot to that workplaces have made enormous grounds. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the workplace I'm in at nine Radio
Speaker 1: and compared to the cup that I worked for the
Speaker 1: same organization, you know, maybe five years ago, the strides
Speaker 1: made in you know, HR for example and elsewhere is remarkable.
Speaker 1: Who should go to livework cancer dot Com?
Speaker 2: So okay, so firstly, anyone that's trying to balance work
Speaker 2: in cancer. So we provide one on one coaching to
Speaker 2: help them determine what their goals are. You know, do
Speaker 2: they want to go back to work? Do they want
Speaker 2: to do they feel that they've got the ability to go.
Speaker 3: Back to work?
Speaker 2: How do they want to go back to work, what
Speaker 2: are they worried about? So that coaching at one on one.
Speaker 2: We've set up network groups. Now at this stage it's
Speaker 2: only for women. Men tend not to like to come
Speaker 2: into a support group environment. But if the men say
Speaker 2: otherwise and they want to participate paid in a network group,
Speaker 2: we will set one of those up again. And then
Speaker 2: we go to the workplaces. And that's a combination of
Speaker 2: just you know, having a one hour forty minute conversation
Speaker 2: with the workplace like an all staff meeting. This is
Speaker 2: what the cancer experience can look like. This is what
Speaker 2: the research tells us, this is what you might be
Speaker 2: able to consider and then help them with their their strategies,
Speaker 2: their policies.
Speaker 1: Well, if I look wagen intervene here and I know,
Speaker 1: I know the station manager of this place is listening. Greg,
Speaker 1: this sounds like a master, it seems to me. So
Speaker 1: I have to go. But gosh, I've learned so much
Speaker 1: talking with you. I wish you'd continued good health, and
Speaker 1: thank you for what you're doing for people who have
Speaker 1: had their battles or will have their battles. It's so very.
Speaker 3: Important, so great. Thanks, Thanks for not.
Speaker 1: At all or sue what all and again the website
Speaker 1: is lipworkcancer dot com. Where would we be with our
Speaker 1: people like zooh hashtagre saying