how to support friend w/"chronic" cancer
Find a Conversation
| Sun, 04-22-2007 - 10:57pm |
Can anyone advise me how to be a good friend to someone with Stage 4 Lung Cancer?
she says she will never be cured, but the doctors have told her they can keep her alive as long as her body can take the chemo. she will be on chemo the rest of her life.
she is 32 years old with a 5 yr old daughter - very sad. she's been very brave and just talks about her cancer like someone might talk about a bad case of allergies, like it's a big pain in the neck.
she has good days, and has bad days.
i don't bring it up unless she does, and when she brings it up i listen as long as she needs to talk. but can that be seen as being uncaring? should i be asking her about it?
i usually try to just act like it's just business as usual. i talk to her about all the mundane things we usually talked about before she found out she had cancer.
but every time i look at her, i'm thinking, "oh my god - this girl has cancer". even on her good days it's all i can think about. i worry that she can see it all over me, and i hope that doesn't bring her down. I always ask her how she's feeling, and i wonder if that's annoying.
I like to treat her as "normal" as possible so she doesn't have to feel like some pathetic freak. But is it annoying to someone with cancer to have people just act like her cancer is some minor inconvenience? I try to keep it light, but i don't know if it would be more appropriate to just say what i'm thinking, that this is so very horrible.
Sometimes she gets really into the horror of it, talking about a nurse has to come drain her fluids every day. she has a pipe that sucks fluid out of her lungs into a bag and a nurse comes to drain it every day, and it is painful. sometimes she just can't get out of bed. she says she just feels sick all the time and feels like she could fall asleep anywhere, anytime. when she gets really into it, i don't hold back about my feelings and tell her how very miserable i think the whole thing is. but i wonder if i would be better to try to help her see the "bright" side of things, like how lucky she is that they've made so many advances. or will it just be annoying for me to try to "brighten" it up for her?
and every time i say the word "die", i feel awful. (as in "i could've just died of embarassment" or something like that) it slips out sometimes and immediately after it slips out, i beat myself up for my choice of words.
my dad is a Lung Cancer survivor and his was pretty serious, spread to the lymph nodes. he was cured by Avastin. she has been ruled out as a candidate for Avastin, so now feel like i shouldn't have told her about my dad. i told her to give her hope, and she said thank you, but i wonder it just makes her resent my dad for getting his miracle and me for telling her about it.
there's so many question marks. i just don't know what the do's and don'ts are with cancer.
Can anyone tell me how i can be a good friend to her?

Hi and welcome to the board.