When do you tell your employer about your diagnosis?

Unfortunately I had to tell my manager fairly quickly because I got the call with my biopsy results in the middle,of a meeting with her! I was able to do everything with only 7 sick days. I filled out paperwork for an intermittent medical leave, but I never had to take an extended time off. You won't know about chemo until your surgery and the Oncotype results. Personally, I would wait until you know what the treatment plan is before you go down that road with your employer.

I requested a meeting to talk about work hours, then bam, told them I had cancer and needed time off to get surgery. They told me to talk to HR. I emailed HR that I needed to go less than full time because of health issues. HR was accommodating, asked me how many hours, asked for a medical leave letter from the doctor. I went part time up until my surgery, then took leave. After the first medical leave for surgery, I took another medical leave for chemo. What I did was, I asked them to let me do one chemo cycle to see if I could work. I couldn't, so I got a doctor's note for another leave. 

Eigna, it does sometimes take time for things to start rolling. For example, do you have a BC team yet? (health care professionals, nurses, oncologist, etc.). In my case, I was introduced fairly early to a coordinator who was helpful on how to approach work and hooked me up with people who knew a lot about leave etc. I'm hoping all goes well for you.

My boss was with me when I got the call, so that kind of said it all. I found it helpful that people at work knew everything.

All the diagnostic appointments happened in about 10 days (things moved super fast), so I'd had to share a little already before I got the dx. My manager was traveling for work, and I was going to be out for another half day to meet with the care team, so I called and told her the day after I got the dx.

I manage a large team, and this was my second cancer dx. My work calendar is open to my team so they'd already noticed those medical appointments and a couple of them had leaped to the conclusion that my first cancer was back. Plus we had some reorganization going on at work so they were all a bit nervous. I decided to share with them right away and let them know I'd be out for more medical appointments but planned to work normally unless something drastically changed.

Then I met with HR, completed the FMLA paperwork at my manager's request. I ended up not needing that (no chemo, radiation fatigue was real but manageable) although I did take a week off with the lumpectomy. General anesthesia and I are not best friends.

Now I just put doctor's appointment on my calendar for the neverending follow up appointments.

I agree Eigna that primarily only your boss needs to know. Maybe when you talk to your boss you can decide together who else needs to know: HR and upper administration. Certainly you can tell your boss that you want this kept confidential.

I went to my HR first to get policy. I am a professor and had no surgery date yet but knew it would happen first week of classes so out of respect to my students went and talked to my boss. I had my lumpectomy and reconstruction together. But two weeks later had to have another surgery. With the help of HR, I decided what is called intermittent FMLA as I have sick leave to use. I am teaching 2 of my five classes but doing them online from home to have the surgery and to have the radiation. My treatment plan after surgery did not get decided until yesterday, 3 weeks after first surgery because of needing a second and the Tumor Board to discuss what was best.

I would say it depends on your relationship with your boss, but I personally would start with HR so that you can have your privacy. I know my direct boss very well so I was comfortable telling him but my HR person said if I did not want to, they would do it for me.

Good luck with talking to your work. I know it is very uncomfortable but there are laws to help protect your job and your privacy which is comforting.

rlws

I had a good relationship with my boss and told her about my biopsy before I got the results. When I told her the results, she cried and hugged me.

At first I asked for a full time leave of absence. I had an extremely stressful "front line" kind of job and knew there was no way I could work and do chemo, surgery and radiation. She agreed, but countered with an offer to reassign me to less immediate and stressful duties and suggested a "let's see how it goes approach".

As it turns out, I took 20 days off for chemo (once a week for 20 weeks), 8 days for surgery and no time for radiation. Although I applied for intermittent FMLA for the legal protection (which every eligible employee in the U.S. should do!), I had enough sick and PTO time to cover my days. Besides, I had been working 60+ hours a week before I got sick and my boss and team actually remembered that and cut me a fair amount of slack.

I also had the flexibility to work from home on days where I was extra tired or when my white blood cell count was low (and was therefore immuno- compromised).

I lost my hair and didn't like wearing a wig, so my cancer became common knowledge quickly, which I was fine with. I had more important things to worry about than whatever office gossip was going on. My team and clients rallied around me, though, and looking back, I'm really quite touched at the response.

For me, work was a welcome distraction. It was also a necessity. I carry our family's health insurance and provide about 60% of household income. Loosing either would have been difficult to say the least.

There are too many variables for a one-size-fits all approach. I'm retired now, but when I had cancer previously when I was still working, my situation was that my division head - and many of my co-workers - were also my close friends. Our HR guy, on the other hand, was a complete dick, and the division head and vice-president above him did all they could to minimize my interaction with HR.

In this latest cancer adventure, I had my radiation treatments early in the morning, around 7:30. They only took about five minutes total each day, perhaps ten on Mondays when new x-rays were included. If I had still been working, I wouldn't have lost any time since my house, hospital, and employment were all within a few miles of each other.

I turned in my notice when I was DX and knew I would have 33 radiation treatments. I did schedule them early.

My situation was different though. I worked the late shift, many miles from my house and a very stressful job although it did pay well.

My DH and I calculated what it was costing for gas and mileage on my car not to mention working in a not so safe neighborhood for FedEx Freight. Plus I could only work PT because I was already receiving a pension from another fedex company so the decision for me to hang it up wasn’t such a hard one to make. I liked the work and that part I miss but just not worth the negatives.

Alice is right though there is no one size, fits all answer.

Diane

Reading these posts is making me even more grateful for my work situation and my generous bosses. I work in a four person office - two bosses, two employees - and I told them all as soon as I was diagnosed. They have all been amazing since. Both bosses and my coworker immediately said "do whatever you need to do, we'll deal with it". There was never any question of them continuing to pay me while I'm out and going through everything, which is beyond wonderful as I am single with no other source of income and would have a very hard time managing with any reduction right now.

As I still have two weeks before my surgery, I still don't know if I will need chemo, but my BS is insisting on a hard two weeks off after surgery, possibly three, and then I will definitely have radiation. Even though my coworker is adamant that she will cover my work while I'm out, I plan to work part time from home after the first week off following surgery to keep her from going insane. Then I hope to schedule radiation for mid to late afternoons, so I can work at least half days, then go home and rest after each treatment.

For a small firm like ours, this is going to be a long haul, but I am hoping that I can do enough while I'm dealing with all this to both keep my coworker from quitting under the workload and keep my bosses from questioning their generosity

hello all I worked on medical field most of my life first in the O R 15 yrs then when diagnosed was working at city clinic medical center got call before work that day spoke with manager and decided to take leave of absence for 6 mo. Glad I did treatments gave me side effects fatigue etc but went back to work after treatment was complete staff surprised with Welcome back party. Retired now a Praise God A 25yr Survivor and 25th wedding anniversary was planning our 2nd marriage at diagnosis. msphil idc stage2 0/3 nodes 3mo chemo before and after Lmast then we got married then 7wks rads and 5 yrs on Tamoxifen