Pogrebin - How to be a friend to a friend whos sick

ALSO BY

LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN

How to Make It In A Mans World

Getting Yours

Growing Up Free

Family Politics

Among Friends

Deborah, Golda, and Me

Getting Over Getting Older

Three Daughters

Stories for Free Children (editor)

Free to Be You and Me (editorial consultant)

LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN

PublicAffairs
New York

Copyright 2013 by Letty Cottin Pogrebin.

Published in the United States by PublicAffairs,
a Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved.

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Book Design by Pauline Brown

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin.

How to be a friend to a friend whos sick / Letty Cottin Pogrebin.First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61039-284-6 (hardcover)978-1-61039-284-6 (e-book) 1. Care of the sickPsychological aspects. 2. Caregivers. 3. Helping behavior. 4. DiseasesPsychological aspects. I. Title.

R726.5.P62 2013

610dc23

2012049749

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

EMILY DICKINSON

IM NOT A DOCTOR, SOCIAL WORKER, PSYCHOLOGIST, religious leader, or grief counselorso who am I to write this book? Very simply, Im someone who haswhoops, who hadcancer. Im also a woman with lots of friends and a writer who became fascinated by the disconnect between how people treat sick people and how sick people wish to be treated. To illuminate this phenomenon I started with my firsthand experience, buttressed it with some research, and conducted nearly eighty in-depth interviews with other sick people, many of them my fellow patients at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Ive distilled everything into a book that I know can make you a better friend to a friend whos sick. Before the movie begins, lets cut to the chase. Heres what youre going to learn in these pages: empathy translated into action equals kindness. Its a foolproof formula; all you need is the appropriate vehicle for your best impulses and the commitment to stick it out over the long haul. Im sure you already know how to be friends when it means catching up over lunch, sitting side by side at a ball game, or texting each other about a movie. But when a pal or loved one falters physically or mentallywhen theyre hobbled or hurting, when your role in the relationship is no longer easy or obvious, when your interests and exchanges are not entirely reciprocal, and your once-easy conversation tips jarringly toward matters of crisis and painyou may have to find new ways of being together, new means for you to be helpful, and new words to keep things real.

My sensitivity to these issues was sharply honed when I observed my friends responses to me after I was diagnosed. But the most valuable lessons in this book came from my fellow patients who comprise the majority of those I interviewed for this book. Though strangers to one another, we shared a commonality of crisis that inspired mutual revelation, a situational intimacy that somehow entitled me to ask astonishingly personal questions and get remarkably candid answers. Like seatmates on a long plane trip, we had nothing to lose by opening up to each other and letting the truth leak outa truth with no consequences because we knew it could be recorked when we parted company, never to see one another again.

Entering other peoples truth, I learned that illness is friendships proving ground, the uncharted territory where ones actions may be the least sure-footed but also the most indelible; that illness tests old friendships, gives rise to new ones, changes the dynamics of a relationship, causes a shift in the power balance, a reversal of roles, and assorted weird behaviors; that in the presence of a sick friend, fragile folks can get unhinged and Type A personalities turn manic in order to compensate for their impotence; and that hale fellows can become insufferably paternalistic, and shy people suddenly wax sanctimonious.

Other patterns took shape in these testimonies: not all sick people want the same amount or kind of attention. Women and men tend to do friendship and illness differently. A joke amusing to one patient can be offensive to another. A squeeze of the hand can feel comforting when one friend does it, patronizing when the hand belongs to someone else. Emotions stirred by illness can be overwhelming, a friends symptoms alienating, medical jargon intimidating. Someone elses health crisis can trigger memories of our own past ordeals or those of a person we loved. Its not uncommon for people to freeze or panic in the company of misery, botch gestures that were meant to ease, attempt to problem-solve when we have no idea what were talking about, say the wrong thing, talk too much, fidget in the sick room, sit too close to the patient or stand too far away. Some of us dont visit our sick friends at all. Others visit, overstay, and make things worse. Some bring an inappropriate gift or arrive empty handed, only to be mortified when they find the sickroom stuffed with bouquets and balloons.

The stories I collected from others helped me understand my own reactions and fueled my determination to be a better friend to my ailing friends. Among other lessons, I learned that its not enough to be a good-hearted person if youre oblivious to the pain in someones eyes; that friendship can nourish, help, and heal but also disappoint and suffocate. With every interview I marveled at how thin and permeable is the membrane between good intentions and bad behavior, how human it is to be both strong and vulnerable, and how people process the sickness, stress, and sorrow of their friends in many different ways.

My interviewees generosity, their willingness to spend time talking to me, to revisit painful memories and share their often hard-won advice has been the making of this book. But fair warning: some of their tips may seem platitudinous or self-evident to you (or maybe just to me). Ive included them nonetheless because they were repeated often enough to suggest that theyre not so obvious or intuitive to everyone else. If 5 or 10 percent of the advice makes you wince, I beg your indulgence on behalf of those readers who need a little extra help being helpful.

Likewise, some advice will be irrelevant to whats happening in your life at the moment. You may not have any relatives with prostate cancer, friends who are slipping into dementia, or whose kids are terminally ill. Remember that this book does not have to be read from cover to cover; it can be dipped into as needed. You can skim the chapter titles, hone in on what you need to know right now, and set the book aside for future reference when those other awful situations eventually crop up. And trust me, they will.