Self-employment and cancer

Running your own business can be very rewarding. But a cancer diagnosis can be especially worrying if you are self-employed.

You may have some of the following questions:

• How will my business be affected?
• How will I cope financially?
• Who will support me?

You may need to make decisions about how to keep your business going during and after cancer treatment.

When making decisions about taking time off work, you may need to think about:

• your finances
• any benefits you could get.

Benefits are payments from the government to people who need financial help.

You might need to make decisions about working during treatment. Your specialist nurse can tell you more about how the treatment might affect you. You can then decide whether it is possible for you to work.

It is impossible to know how you will react to treatment until you start. This makes it hard to plan ahead and decide how much work to take on. It may help to let your colleagues or customers know you may need to change your plans at short notice.

It may help to think about what you could do in different situations. For example, when treatment is finished, you may start to recover and feel able to work more again. If this happens you could work reduced hours, gradually building them up. But you would need to be prepared to have less income.

Being diagnosed with cancer and having to take time away from your business can cause many different emotions. You may have put a lot of time and money into your business to make it successful. You may feel:

• angry that you cannot work when you have a lot to do
• helpless and worried about the business or paying bills
• lonely and isolated, if you are unable to work for periods of time
• less confident in yourself and your work
• less independent, or like you have lost a sense of normality
• tired and stressed
• that things you used to find easy are now much more difficult.

Talking about your feelings can often help. You might worry that asking for help makes you a burden. But people are usually pleased to help and support you. 

It can be difficult to know who to talk to and what to say. It is important to speak to someone you feel comfortable with and trust.

If you have, or have ever had cancer, the law considers you to be disabled. This means you cannot be treated less favourably than people who do not have cancer because you have cancer, or for reasons connected to the cancer. That would be discrimination.

If you are self-employed, you may not have legal protection against discrimination.

Problems may happen because of a misunderstanding about cancer. Some examples of this are a client thinking that:

• you can no longer do the same work
• you may be less committed to work because of the cancer
• cancer makes you unsuitable for certain contracts.

Or another contractor may think that they will need to do extra work because you are having treatment.

Any of these attitudes can lead to difficulties in your work life when you have cancer.

Everyone has different ways of communicating. Some people like to talk about their thoughts and feelings, while others are more private. Cultural differences might affect this too.

If you decide to tell someone about the cancer, these tips may help:

• Think about what you are going to say. You could write down a few main points, especially if you will be talking on the phone.
• Try to choose a good time to talk. Are you feeling able to talk today? Does the other person have time to give you their attention?
• Is it better to tell them over the phone or in person? If face-to-face will be better, choose somewhere you feel comfortable.
• Be prepared for the emotions you may both feel. You may not know about their past experiences, or how they will react.
• Be careful about telling people in writing. It is easy to get the wrong idea from an email or note, and it can seem impersonal.

You can decide:

• who to tell
• what to tell them
• how much you want them to know.

Ask people to respect your privacy and make it clear if you want them to keep your conversation confidential. Think about whether this will put them in an awkward situation.

If you have a business partner, you could ask them to tell people if you feel this would be easier.

As with any big decision, you may want to talk to someone you trust and ask for their opinion first. You can ask a professional adviser, such as your accountant. Try to have important conversations when you are feeling your best. Be clear what your goals are before you start. It might help to make notes before your meeting to help you feel more prepared.

We want everyone affected by cancer to feel our information is written for them.

We want our information to be as clear as possible. To do this, we try to:

• use plain English
• explain medical words
• use short sentences
• use illustrations to explain text
• structure the information clearly
• make sure important points are clear.

We use gender-inclusive language and talk to our readers as ‘you’ so that everyone feels included. Where clinically necessary we use the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’ or ‘male’ and ‘female’. For example, we do so when talking about parts of the body or mentioning statistics or research about who is affected.

You can read more about how we produce our information here.