Marissa Henley

Encouraging weary women to hope in Christ alone

How to help a close friend with cancer

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In a previous post, I discussed a topic on which my friends have made me an expert:  how to be a friend to someone with cancer.  Of course, it looks different if you are one of the few women closest to the woman batting cancer.  You may be leaned on more heavily for emotional and logistical support by your friend.  So this post is for those of you who have one of your besties battling this terrible disease.

Recently, one of my close friends was talking about when I had cancer and said, “what we went through . . . ” and then stopped and said, “I mean, what you went through . . . ”  I stopped her and told her that WE went through it.  I look back on my cancer journey and know that for my close family and friends, we all had cancer together.  Yes, they got to keep their hair, and our experience of the situation was different.  But they bore my burdens to such an extent that we were all heavily affected by cancer.

If you have a close friend battling cancer, it has probably changed your life. You may want to read my previous post about helping a friend with cancer.  I hope those ideas combined with this post will help you understand as much as possible what your friend is going through.  Again, I am writing about women helping women.  I won’t even try to guess what a man needs as he battles cancer.  And everyone is different, so please ask questions, or even share this post with your friend with cancer and ask her what she agrees with from her experience.

1.  Offer to coordinate help.  Find out their meal needs, food allergies and dislikes, and set up an online calendar so friends can sign up.  Your friend does not have the energy to sort through offers of meals, assign dates to people, and make sure she doesn’t get three lasagnas in a row.  Ask your friend to send out a mass email or post on her Facebook wall that all offers of help should be sent to you, and then you can organize this for her.  You may also help coordinate child care, housecleaning, and other logistical needs during her treatment.

2.  Text or call when you’re heading to the grocery store.  When I was in treatment, two of my close friends kept an envelope of my money in their purses.  They would pick up groceries that we needed, figure out my total, and pay themselves out of my envelope.  (I hope they rounded up, because I bet that was a pain.)  When they ran out of my cash, I’d hand them some more.  It was a huge help, since I was usually in Houston or didn’t have enough white blood cells to be at Wal-mart.  And if my husband goes to the store, he comes home with Ramen noodles, Pringles, and Mountain Dew.

3.  Anticipate needs she may not be thinking of (or not have the courage to ask for help with).  When it’s time to sign up for items for a school party, sign up for her, and let her know you’ll grab it at the store and take it to the school.  If your children are invited to a birthday party, offer to grab a gift for her child to take.  (See how often that envelope of cash will come in handy?)  Decorate her house for the holidays–and don’t forget to take the decorations down when the holiday has passed.  These are all tasks my close friends helped with, and it was greatly appreciated.

4.  Be sensitive to her need for normalcy.  After just spending three paragraphs telling you to do everything you can for your friend, I’m going to throw a wrench into the formula and tell you this:  your friend with cancer may be grasping at every bit of normalcy she can find.  She may want to get her own groceries and do her own laundry or get the birthday party gift herself.  Just be sensitive to what she’s capable of doing, ask questions, and let her tell you “no thanks.”

5.  Tell your friend when people ask you how she’s doing.  Cancer treatment can be lonely and isolating.  Sometimes it feels like the normal world is going on without you, while you’re stuck in cancer world.  It helps to know that people in the normal world are thinking about you and care enough to ask your friends how you are doing.    You may also ask your friend to clarify which information can be shared with others and what needs to be kept private, as many may rely on you for information about how she’s doing.

6.  Listen.  Your friend has a lot on her mind.  She’s been diagnosed with a serious illness, and depending on her treatment and her prognosis, she may be dealing with major changes to her body, her lifestyle, and her life expectancy.  You cannot fix this.  Even if you could figure out the most perfect, profound, thoughtful words to say, your friend would still have cancer.  You don’t need to have answers or perfect words.  Just sit with her, be a safe place, and listen.

7.  Remember that your friend is overwhelmed.  I hate to be harsh, because I know it is tough when your close friend has cancer.  But you need to remember that this isn’t about you.  Your friend is probably stressed, exhausted and highly emotional.  She may say or do things that hurt your feelings.  You will need to give your friend mountains of grace and forgiveness during this time, and you may want to find another friend who can help you process your feelings.  Don’t try to ask for emotional support from your friend with cancer.  She doesn’t have it to give right now.

8.  Be positive.  Whether she says it out loud or not, your friend with cancer is probably scared.  If she needs to talk about death, do not blow her off and gloss over her fears by saying, “Oh, don’t talk that way–you will be fine.”  Listen to her.  But unless her doctors have told her that her disease is terminal, she needs you to remain positive.  You may want to say something like, “I know you are scared.  If the worst happens, I will help Steve with the kids.  But we’re not to that point yet.  You are beating this!”

9.  Be in it for the long haul.  My cancer treatment lasted for more than 8 months.  And I am still dealing with the repercussions more than a year later, both physical and emotional.  When you are first diagnosed with cancer, there is a huge outpouring of love and support.  As time goes on, you start to wonder if people will move on to the next crisis before you are finished needing them.  Let your friend know that you understand this is a long-term situation, and you aren’t going anywhere.

10.  Understand that cancer will change your friend forever.  Your friend will be different, even after her cancer treatment is over.  Some of her friendships will survive this change, and others won’t.  If you want to be one of the friendships that survives, you must be willing to walk through these changes with her.  Be supportive of her new, cancer-related friendships.  Listen, ask questions and try to understand what it’s like for her as a cancer patient or a cancer survivor.  Be a safe place where she can talk about her fears and disappointments.  Know what conversation topics or events can trigger emotions about what she’s going through (or what she’s been through).  Realize that cancer will impact her life on a daily basis even after she’s finished with treatment and everyone else celebrates and moves on.

A note to my friends:  This list is compiled from the wonderful ways you supported me and from my own failures as a friend, not yours.  God used each one of you in His perfect way to be what I needed in different ways and different times.  You are one of His great expressions of His love for me, and I love you all.

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How to Help a Friend with Cancer

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People tell me sometimes that I should write a book. I have no idea what this book should be about, but I think the topic I know the most about is this:

How to be the World’s Most Amazing Friend to Someone with Cancer.

I am not an expert on this because I am an amazing friend to others. God blessed me with an army of fabulous friends who loved me and supported me through nine months of cancer treatment and beyond. They have made me an expert on this topic.

Knowing that everyone reading this will someday know someone who is diagnosed with cancer, I thought I’d put all my friend’s wonderful ideas into writing. Please keep in mind that every cancer patient has different feelings, needs and desires. Your friend’s experience may be different from mine. Ask questions!

Also, I am writing about ways that women can support female cancer patients. I can barely understand my own husband, let alone what might go on in the mind of a man battling cancer.

Walking through cancer with a close friend looks very different than walking through cancer with an acquaintance or casual friend. So I will handle them in two separate posts. Today we will talk about how to support an acquaintance of casual friend who has been diagnosed with cancer.

1.  Pray for her. Tell her you’re praying for her. Pray some more. As much as your encouraging words and actions will help, nothing is as powerful as bringing your friend before the throne of her Creator and Redeemer. Long after the doctors tell her she’s cancer-free, keep your friend on your list for frequent prayer.

2.  Remember that everyone processes a cancer diagnosis differently. Don’t compare your friend’s reaction to her cancer diagnosis to other’s. Don’t assume she is feeling a certain way because that’s how you would feel. Ask lots of questions.

3.  Realize that you don’t understand. Don’t pretend like you do. Don’t try to compare something else in your life experience to what she’s going through (unless you’ve had cancer or another life-threatening illness.)

When I had a family member going through cancer, I often related her symptoms to my pregnancies, because that was my closest experience to the fatigue and nausea she was having. Now I realize that even though I never said being pregnant was like having cancer, it may have come across that way and been extremely frustrating to her. (She was kind enough to never tell me that.)

4.  Realize that having cancer can be isolating. So even though you don’t totally understand, avoid saying repeatedly that you just can’t imagine what she’s going through. Your friend with cancer doesn’t need to feel like this is so terrible that it isn’t even fathomable by anyone else. Just listen and empathize and try to understand as much as you can about what this is like for her.

5.  Offer to help. Try not to say, “Let me know how I can help.” Even though you are sincere, your friend might not know how to take you up on this offer. Saying, “Can I bring you dinner?” is better. Or try saying, “I’d like to bring you dinner next week. Would Monday or Wednesday work?”

I had a friend let me know that she was available at specific times during the week and could drive my children to school. I really appreciated her specific offer and could easily match it to one of my needs. She drove my son to preschool each Tuesday throughout my treatment.

6.  Let your friend say no to your offers of help. She may be overwhelmed by the influx of meals, she may not be comfortable with having someone else clean her house or care for her kids, or she may not be ready to accept help. Respect her no but keep asking gently and specifically from time to time.

7.  If she has an unlimited text plan, use text messages to communicate frequently that you are thinking of her and praying for her. Don’t be afraid to call your friend. She will ignore you if she needs to. But text messages are a quick and non-intrusive way to remind her that you care.

Ask about her text plan first–I racked up $50 in text overage charges after I was diagnosed and was thankful to be retroactively switched to an unlimited messaging plan!

8.  When you write her an email or text, say “You don’t have to write me back.” In the first few days after a cancer diagnosis, your friend is probably inundated with phone messages, emails and texts. It is overwhelming and time consuming if she feels that she needs to respond to all of them. And during treatment, she probably doesn’t have the energy to respond. She will appreciate your letting her off the hook whenever possible. This can apply to phone messages as well.

9.  When you visit in person, make sure she sits down. Your friend may be too proud to ask you to come past the doorway or the entryway to sit with her. But she’s probably very tired and would appreciate having a seat while you chat.

10.  Write her encouraging notes. The kind you put a stamp on. Getting notes in the mail is a wonderful surprise in these days of electronic communication. You can make your friend’s day by taking the extra time to send a handwritten note or Bible verse.

11.  If your children attend school or church together, keep your sick kids at home. We’ve all been there. You want to pretend that your toddler with a low-grade fever is cutting teeth or that green snot coming out of their nose is allergies. But your friend needs her kids to stay healthy. If she is receiving chemotherapy, she may not have the white blood cells to fight infection, and a small virus could land her in the hospital. Please be considerate and take extra precautions to protect her family.

12.  Throw her a Scripture shower. After I was diagnosed with cancer, a friend of mine asked my husband for the list Caring Bridge provides of email addresses of everyone who has viewed your site. She sent out a mass email asking them to mail me an index card with a Scripture and/or encouraging note. She sent me a ring to put them on and explained what she had done. For the next few weeks, my mailbox was flooded with index cards, many from people I don’t know. It was a tremendous blessing to me, and I cherish that stack of cards.

13.  Rally the troops for a freezer meal drive. If you know your friend through school or a specific organization, you can ask others to make freezer meals for her family. Find out food allergies and dislikes first, and ask if she has freezer space. If her space is limited, you can keep them in your freezer (or a friend’s) and deliver them in small batches.

My son’s school did this for us, and it was a huge blessing in those early days when our appointment schedule was unpredictable. It can also be helpful after surgery, when she may not want people in and out of her home each day delivering meals.

14.  Bring nutritious, quick breakfast and lunch food. When I had cancer, our church family and friends brought us dinner three times a week for several months. We never could have gotten through those months without them. But my kids wanted to eat three times a day, and my energy was limited. They ate a lot of Pop-Tarts! A few times, a friend brought a huge bag of homemade, (relatively) healthy blueberry pancakes for my freezer. They were easy and my kids loved them!

I would love to hear from other cancer survivors or their friends about other ways to encourage and serve a casual friend who has cancer. God was faithful to ease the burden of my cancer journey with the love and care of so many wonderful friends!

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