Below is a posting from a woman who reposted it on
her site, and who truly believes this is the way we should all behave towards
our brethren whom are ill.
And this woman is celebrating her birthday today, a
dear soul named Kit Minden, who has PPMS, and runs a site for all with chronic
illness, mostly all forms of MS, to be
heard and learn from intelligent postings from mainly her but from a few others
too… and she is loved and respected by all who know her, rightfully so, since
she lives by the words below, in practice and deed.
Most of us try to maintain this form of compassion,
after all we all have our own crosses to bear, and so understanding should be
simple, but sadly not for all of us…
Why, I, myself have felt that commiserating, was relating
by proving you understand by telling of your own similar experience with their
situation, and apparently I was oh so wrong. I truly believed too that real
compassion was putting you in the other person’s position, but now I have
learned that each person’s experience is unique unto them, and none are the
exact same, I think? Oops, my MS brain is confusing me. But I can still be
taught and I am willing to learn new things! Although, I may falter I will
continue to try when steered in the right direction.
Onward with the words that we
should all live by…from…this very useful essay…
- “April
12, 2013, 7:12 p.m. ET
For a Sick Friend: First, Do No Harm
Conversing
with the ill can be awkward, but keeping a few simple commandments makes a huge
difference
'A closed mouth
gathers no feet." It's a charming axiom, but silence isn't always an
option when we're dealing with a friend who's sick or in despair. The natural
human reaction is to feel awkward and upset in the face of illness, but unless
we control those feelings and come up with an appropriate response, there's a
good chance that we'll blurt out some cringe-worthy cliché, craven remark or
blunt question that, in retrospect, we'll regret.
Take this
real-life exchange. If ever the tone deaf needed a poster child, Fred is their
man.
"How'd it
go?" he asked his friend, Pete, who'd just had cancer surgery.
"Great!"
said Pete. "They got it all."
"Really?"
said Fred. "How do they know?"
Ellen Weinstein
A
few simple commandments makes a huge difference when conversing with the ill.
More From Review
Later, when Pete
told him how demoralizing his remark had been, Fred's excuse was, "I was
nervous. I just said what popped into my head."
We're all nervous around illness and mortality, but
whatever pops into our heads should not necessarily plop out of our mouths.
Yet, in my own experience as a breast-cancer patient, and for many of the
people I have interviewed, friends do make hurtful remarks. Marion Fontana, who
was diagnosed with breast cancer eight years after her husband, a New York City firefighter, died in the collapse of the World Trade
Center, was told that she
must have really bad karma to attract so much bad luck. In another case, upon
hearing a man's leukemia diagnosis, his friend shrieked, "Wow! A girl in
my office just died of that!"
You can't make
this stuff up.
If we're not
unwittingly insulting our sick friends, we're spouting clichés like
"Everything happens for a reason." Though our intent is to comfort
the patient, we also say such things to comfort ourselves and tamp down our own
feelings of vulnerability. From now on, rather than sound like a Hallmark card,
you might want to heed the following 10 Commandments for Conversing With a Sick
Friend.
1. Rejoice at their good news. Don't minimize
their bad news. A guy tells you
that the doctors got it all, say "Hallelujah!" A man with advanced
bladder cancer says that he's taking his kids to Disneyland
next summer, don't bite your lip and mutter, "We'll see." Tell him
it's a great idea. (What harm can it do?) Which doesn't mean that you should
slap a happy face on a friend's grim diagnosis by saying something like,
"Don't worry! Nowadays breast cancer is like having a cold!"
The best response
in any encounter with a sick friend is to say, "Tell me what I can do to
make things easier for you—I really want to help."
2. Treat your sick friends as you always
did—but never forget their changed circumstance. However contradictory that may sound, I promise you
can learn to live within the paradox if you keep your friend's illness and its
constraints in mind but don't treat them as if their illness is who they are.
Speak to them as you always did (tease them, kid around with them, get mad at
them) but indulge their occasional blue moods or hissy-fits. Most important,
start conversations about other things (sports, politics, food, movies) as soon
as possible and you'll help speed their journey from the morass of illness to
the miracle of the ordinary.
3. Avoid self-referential comments. A friend with a hacking cough doesn't need to hear,
"You think that's bad? I had double pneumonia." Don't tell someone
with brain cancer that you know how painful it must be because you get
migraines. Don't complain about your colicky baby to the mother of a child with
spina bifida. I'm not saying sick people have lost their capacity to empathize
with others, just that solipsism is unhelpful and rude. The truest thing you
can say to a sick or suffering friend is, "I can only try to imagine what
you're going through."
4. Don't assume, verify. Several friends of Michele, a Canadian writer,
reacted to her cancer diagnosis with, "Well, at least you caught it early,
so you'll be all right!" In fact, she did not catch it early, and never
said or hinted otherwise. So when someone said, "You caught it
early," she thought, "No, I didn't, therefore I'm going to die."
Repeat after me: "Assume nothing."
5. Get the facts straight before you open
your mouth. Did your friend have
a heart or liver transplant? Chemo or radiation? Don't just ask, "How are
you?" Ask questions specific to your friend's health. "How's your
rotator cuff these days?" "Did the blood test show Lyme
disease?" "Are your new meds working?" If you need help
remembering who has shingles and who has lupus, or the date of a friend's
operation, enter a health note under the person's name in your contacts list or
stick a Post-it by the phone and update the information as needed.
6. Help your sick friend feel useful. Zero in on one of their skills and lead to it.
Assuming they're up to the task, ask a cybersmart patient to set up a Web page
for you; ask a bridge or chess maven to give you pointers on the game; ask a
retired teacher to guide your teenager through the college application process.
In most cases, your request won't be seen as an imposition but a vote of
confidence in your friend's talent and worth.
7. Don't
infantilize the patient. Never
speak to a grown-up the way you'd talk to a child. Objectionable sentences
include, "How are we today, dearie?" "That's a good boy."
"I bet you could swallow this teeny-tiny pill if you really tried."
And the most wince-worthy, "Are we ready to go wee-wee?" Protect your
friend's dignity at all costs.
8. Think twice before giving advice. Don't
forward medical alerts, newspaper clippings or your Aunt Sadie's cure for gout.
Your idea of a health bulletin that's useful or revelatory may mislead, upset,
confuse or agitate your friend. Sick people have doctors to tell them what to
do. Your job is simply to be their friend.
9. Let patients who are terminally ill set
the conversational agenda.
If they're unaware that they're
dying, don't be the one to tell them. If they know they're at the end of life
and want to talk about it, don't contradict or interrupt them; let them vent or
weep or curse the Fates. Hand them a tissue and cry with them. If they want to
confide their last wish, or trust you with a long-kept secret, thank them for
the honor and listen hard. Someday you'll want to remember every word they say.
10. Don't pressure them to practice 'positive
thinking.' The implication is
that they caused their illness in the first place by negative thinking—by
feeling discouraged, depressed or not having the "right attitude."
Positive thinking can't cure Huntington's disease, ALS or inoperable brain
cancer. Telling a terminal patient to keep up the fight isn't just futile, it's
cruel. Insisting that they see the glass as half full may deny them the truth
of what they know and the chance to tie up life's loose ends while there's
still time. As one hospice patient put it, "All I want from my friends
right now is the freedom to sulk and say goodbye."
Though most of us
feel dis-eased around disease, colloquial English proffers a sparse vocabulary
for the expression of embarrassment, fear, anxiety, grief or sorrow. These 10
commandments should help you relate to your sick friends with greater empathy,
warmth and grace.
—Ms. Pogrebin is the author of 10 books and a founding editor of Ms.
magazine. Her latest book is "How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick,"
from which this essay is adapted.
A
version of this article appeared April 13, 2013, on page C3 in the U.S.
edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: For a Sick Friend,
First, Do No Harm.”
In
closing kindness should be to all people not just to the infirm, I do believe.
But
at times our own frustration and personal concerns make us forget that no one
has the right to be mean to anyone else and why should not hurting others be
just the mindset legacy from an eight year old Boston Bombing victim, Martin
Richard, it should be all of ours…
On
that note of some noteworthiness, allow me to be the very first to wish all of
you a very happy good night and ask all of you to kindly count all your
blessings and share all your overages with all who you care to and we will you!
And
next time please be here or be square, ya hear?!
PS
you know some people old and young just get it right without having to be
taught like Kit and Martin respectively.