Sometimes all we want during our cancer care is the safety and comfort of our own homes. When treatments require us to stay overnight at the hospital, the new setting feels like yet another move into uncharted territory that you may not know how to navigate.

Hospital care that requires overnight stay is called inpatient treatment; appointments and procedures that can be done with an in-and-out appointment are called outpatient. Your cancer treatment plan may involve a mix of inpatient and outpatient procedures. Inpatient treatment often requires more preparation and monitoring from your care team.

If the course of your treatment involves an overnight hospital stay, here are some Jadey tips for what you can expect.

Questions to Ask Before Your Inpatient Stay

Not all inpatient stays are the same, and it’s important to talk to your doctor before your stay so that you know what to expect and how to prepare. You may want to ask:

  • How long is your stay expected to be?
  • What procedures and treatments can you expect?
  • What will the side effects be like?
  • Who will the members of your care team be?
  • Are there any limits to visitors or circumstances in which visitors are not allowed? Can visitors stay overnight? Do they have a comfortable place to sleep? Should they bring anything in particular?
  • What should you bring with you? Your care team may have specific recommendations.
  • Is there anything that you or visitors should not bring? For example: though they’re beautiful, fresh flowers are often prohibited at some hospitals for fear of introducing fungal spores and causing an infection.

In addition to details about your inpatient treatment, it is also helpful to be informed about the support resources your hospital provides. Dr. Salman Punekar, a medical oncologist at NYU suggests to ask about, “how are you going to pass the time and what resources are available to you while in the hospital that are not directly related to your cancer care?”

Other questions you can ask about hospital resources:

  • What counseling or support group resources are available?
  • Are there lounges or additional locations in the hospital for patients to relax in?
  • Are there any ongoing research studies that you may be eligible to participate in?
  • Are you able to get food delivered to your room?
  • And even just broadly asking “what are the best ways I can prepare for my stay and what resources are available to me?” can lead to helpful suggestions from your care team.

In fact, experts say that being knowledgeable about what to expect and seeking out professional help early on can help you best cope with the challenging aspects of inpatient stay, like loneliness, isolation and your mental health.

“It's good to have a clear expectation of what's going to happen during the hospitalization,” Dr. Punekar says. “The best advice I can give is to be as well-informed as possible about what to expect, to seek help early, and pursue professional help.”

Getting Organized Before Your Stay

Being away from home can be daunting because there’s so much to take care of. Maybe you have to notify your workplace or school that you’ll be needing time off, coordinate childcare or pet care while you’re away from home, or connect with a neighbor or friend to water your plants and run errands.

This to-do list can feel overwhelming, but you don’t need to tackle it all on your own. Reach out to friends and family to see what they can assist with.

Alayna Riozzi-Bodine, who was diagnosed with lymphoma when she was 17, says her go-to items were essential oils to put on her wrists and behind her ears to mask the hospital smells, blankets, fuzzy socks, port-accessible shirts, fashionable hospital gowns and button down pajamas, and her favorite snacks, “whether that would be good or bad for you,” she says.

Pack some things to help you sleep, like earplugs, eyemasks, or a white noise machine. Hospitals are noisy and bright. Nancy Ohanian Gerhard, an advanced practice nurse at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, warns that “sleep may be interrupted, because you’ll be woken to get your vital signs taken” on a regular basis (yes, even in the overnight hours).

Coping with Loneliness (Ask Your Friends to Call and Visit)

The emotional aspect of your cancer treatment can often be even more difficult than the physical. Staying in the hospital for extended periods of time can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation. Preparing for these feelings ahead of time can help when they pile up.

Colleen Sutphen, an oncological nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, says that scheduling set opportunities to hang out with friends and family is important during long hospital stays.

“I hate using the word stigma, but [with] so many people, so many of my patients, I find it's hard for them to tell their friends and family what they're going through. Whatever brought you together before your diagnosis is what should keep you together through this,” she says. “Not trying to reinvent the wheel and find new things, but trying to keep it as normal as you can.”

Medical experts emphasize the importance of connecting with your support system before the start of your stay, too. For example, you can schedule game nights, TV show watch parties, or other planned events to stay connected to your support system and engaged during hospital stays, Sutphen says.

In the case that in-person visits are not feasible, there are also ways to utilize remote opportunities to connect.

“Even if it's just planning your FaceTimes and Zoom calls out in advance just so you can see different faces while you’re in there to keep your mind off of the treatment that you’re going through and the four walls that you’re surrounded by,” she says.

Having regular calls scheduled with your loved ones can help give structure and variety to days that otherwise may feel like they’re all blending together. Knowing that you have that built into your future schedule can also take the pressure off if one day you’re just not feeling up for a call and want to cancel. (On the flip side, this could be a time you’ll want to be free of all responsibilities, including updating worried friends and family about your status. At least one Jadey team member did not use her phone once while she was in the hospital for four days, and wouldn’t change a thing. Appoint a communications person that they can text for updates.)

Keep Your Body Moving

Being in the hospital for a long time can impact your physical activity. While you may not be able to do the same exercises or stretches you typically do at home, even just moving a little bit can help.

“When we talk about activity, there is a spectrum of that,” says Dr. Sam Shahpar, a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician specializing in cancer rehabilitation at Northwestern Medicine. For more reading, here’s our article on exercise and staying active during treatment.

As a general rule of thumb, during inpatient treatment: it is better to sit up versus lay down, better to sit up in a chair versus sit in bed, and, if you are able, better to stand up versus sit, even if you are not feeling up for a full walk around the floor. Be sure to check with your care team about what level of activity is safe for you throughout your stay.

And Entertain Yourself

Bring plenty of entertainment, and bring plenty of variety of entertainment. Get new exciting supplies for a project you already love (the fancy watercolors, vibrant coloring books, new noise cancelling headphones to re-watch your favorite TV show) and get stuff for a good time-waster you might want to try (crosswords, books on tape). Games, puzzles, books, movies, crafts. Just know that your brain might not be moving at the speed and clarity it was before, so keep it low stakes and low stress. This is time to focus on your health and recovery, not time to tackle the items on your to-do list.

Jenna Shersher says finding new hobbies and reconnecting with old passions helped her pass the time during her inpatient stays. Jenna was diagnosed with grey zone lymphoma when she was 29 and endured week-long inpatient stays for her chemo.

“I remember I spoke with someone who had Hodgkin lymphoma and he was a couple of years out and he said to me, ‘Jenna, get a hobby,’ and I was like, I'm not going to get a hobby, I’ve got better things to do. But he was totally right, because you can't be thinking about cancer all day, every day. It's not productive,” Jenna says. She found comfort in blogging about her experience and dancing.

“Even if it was dancing in my room to Lady Gaga or Robyn, that allowed me to feel like I was reclaiming my body.”

Make Your Space Yours

If you’re there for a minute, even small personal touches can help make your space feel more comfortable. Bring in some better lighting as an alternative to the harsh overheads, such as those yoga studio fake candles. Hang up some poster art, or tape up cards and photos of your favorite people and places. Little touches like your favorite pillow or throw blanket, or using your own loungewear or robes, can help you feel more like yourself.

Alayna Riozzi-Bodine spent over six weeks isolated in her hospital room for a bone marrow transplant as part of her lymphoma treatment when she was 19. “My room was the one thing that I could control,” she says. “That was the only thing I could have that was mine.” Like a college dorm room, Alayna adorned her space with LED lights, posters, pictures of friends, and decorative bedding to make it feel like home.

“Not only did I realize that it was really helping me mentally, just having a room of my own, but my doctors, my nurses would come in and they'd be like, ‘Wow, we want to hang out in here!’” Now, Alayna has her own foundation with her mom, where one of their initiatives is helping fund other people undergoing bone-marrow transplants to decorate their hospital rooms.

Document Your Wins

Because of the difficulties of extended hospital stays and intensity of treatments, it can feel discouraging when the same hobbies or activities you typically use to pass time now feel much more difficult.

You may find that journaling as a self-care practice is helpful to document and reflect; it’s a great strategy for processing all the challenging emotions you are facing.

“I found that logging my wins, as opposed to just looking at the challenges, was a really important piece of it, because you can't judge the progress that you're experiencing unless you really write it down and distill it down into small pieces,” Jenna says. Whether being able to wiggle her toes, go to the bathroom by herself, or even being able to run a mile once her long chemo course was over, keeping track of these successes helped Jenna build a “gratitude list.”

Progress may also not be linear, and that is fine. Be kind to yourself during your struggles and give lots of space for your bad moods and brain fogs.

When Sutphen advises her patients, she says, “I tell them first to give themselves grace because the puzzle that they used to do easily might be really hard now. But the treatment they’re doing now–for themselves, for their family and for their body–is 10 times harder than that puzzle that they really wanted to do.”

Being away from your home, your routines and comforts, and loved ones makes inpatient stays difficult for reasons beyond just your physical health. To make things better (just a little sometimes but we’ll take it): Reach out to your support system early and often, be proactive about scheduling activities and calls, make the space yours, find moments in your day to try to really enjoy something, and make the most of your hospital’s resources.