"How should I be there for her?"
Normalcy can be comforting
Some of my chemo regimens required me to be in the hospital attached to an IV for three- and five-day stints (probably the hardest part of my whole experience was having no control in that desperate, sterile environment). My mom showed up every day, like clockwork. I would wake up and she would be sitting beside me, reading a book or patiently waiting. She'd recount whatever had happened the night before, what she'd cooked for dinner, who'd called, etc. I found great comfort in the normalcy of the conversation. She was just herself, being herself, and I was just me. The circumstances faded to the background.
On the flip side, a very dear, old friend would sweep into the room in a flurry and without notice, sometimes with someone I hadn't seen in years (not a good idea). At the beginning of my chemo she insisted, "You really need to get your head shaved before your hair all falls out," and said that she would be happy to organize the dirty deed for me. Now, ask anyone who knows me: my long, brown tresses are like an appendage. Thinking about losing them, and how, was trauma enough without actually pre-empting the event. (Which turned out to be four days after my first round of chemo, in a hospital at 4 a.m. -- large chunks gave way with the slightest tug. The nurse who agreed to shave my head, which I now realize was probably a first for her, put on such a confident and positive front, I could imagine exactly what it would be like to have a sister).
Understand that everyone deals with cancer differently
Another time, my friend bought me a plastic blow-up thingy to use as a punching bag. But it was so out of character for me, I couldn't even imagine inflating the stupid thing, never mind hitting it. Finally, she crossed the line when she shared some of my extremely personal -- and embarrassing -- health information with a bigmouthed health-care specialist we both knew in an effort to help find me a remedy. I was angry. I felt my privacy had been violated (trust me -- any patient spending time in hospital considers dignity precious). When I told her that upset me, tempers flared and she hung up on me. I left a message telling her not to call me, that I would call her.
The problem, I realized, was that while my friend really wanted to be helpful, she never asked me what I needed or wanted from her. And since you can't guess what the right thing to do is, says Spencer, "just ask. Say, ‘I'd like to do this, what do you think?' not ‘I'm going to do this.'" I certainly didn't always know what I needed, but it would have been nice to choose, or be given the opportunity to say, "No, thank you."
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Page 3 of 4
Some of my chemo regimens required me to be in the hospital attached to an IV for three- and five-day stints (probably the hardest part of my whole experience was having no control in that desperate, sterile environment). My mom showed up every day, like clockwork. I would wake up and she would be sitting beside me, reading a book or patiently waiting. She'd recount whatever had happened the night before, what she'd cooked for dinner, who'd called, etc. I found great comfort in the normalcy of the conversation. She was just herself, being herself, and I was just me. The circumstances faded to the background.
On the flip side, a very dear, old friend would sweep into the room in a flurry and without notice, sometimes with someone I hadn't seen in years (not a good idea). At the beginning of my chemo she insisted, "You really need to get your head shaved before your hair all falls out," and said that she would be happy to organize the dirty deed for me. Now, ask anyone who knows me: my long, brown tresses are like an appendage. Thinking about losing them, and how, was trauma enough without actually pre-empting the event. (Which turned out to be four days after my first round of chemo, in a hospital at 4 a.m. -- large chunks gave way with the slightest tug. The nurse who agreed to shave my head, which I now realize was probably a first for her, put on such a confident and positive front, I could imagine exactly what it would be like to have a sister).
Understand that everyone deals with cancer differently
Another time, my friend bought me a plastic blow-up thingy to use as a punching bag. But it was so out of character for me, I couldn't even imagine inflating the stupid thing, never mind hitting it. Finally, she crossed the line when she shared some of my extremely personal -- and embarrassing -- health information with a bigmouthed health-care specialist we both knew in an effort to help find me a remedy. I was angry. I felt my privacy had been violated (trust me -- any patient spending time in hospital considers dignity precious). When I told her that upset me, tempers flared and she hung up on me. I left a message telling her not to call me, that I would call her.
The problem, I realized, was that while my friend really wanted to be helpful, she never asked me what I needed or wanted from her. And since you can't guess what the right thing to do is, says Spencer, "just ask. Say, ‘I'd like to do this, what do you think?' not ‘I'm going to do this.'" I certainly didn't always know what I needed, but it would have been nice to choose, or be given the opportunity to say, "No, thank you."
Click to continue...
Page 3 of 4
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