How to be a friend to a cancer victim

dealing with a friend's cancer

The diagnosis of cancer can dive both the cancer victim and the friends of cancer victims into hopelesness. To survive, all parties close to the situation must remain hopeful.

I have a friend who was diagnosed with leukemia for twice. She was first diagnosed, then went into a long remission. Recently, the leukemia can back. The first emotion that I felt when I heard the diagnosis was fear, the gripping kind of kick in the stomach that is the result of feeling helpless and hopeless. It saps all of the life energy that gives us the focus for plans, vision and a future. Then hopelessness set it. When hopelessness grips us, we are paralyzed. But to be useful at all, a friend must deal with their own sense of hopelessness by understanding why this occurs with cancer.

Hopelessness comes when we misplace our trust in things or people and our own ability to maintain or keep our health. Hope in people, the reliance on them for happiness or completion, is like building on sand. People change. Situations change. The value of relationships that are tested.

Here are some practical suggestions: to the cancer victim: find a compassionate but honest friend who will be both empathetic, but challenging. the rest of the advice is to the friend of the cancer victim. Ask probling questions when required. Your friend might need to be reminded of practical issues like paying bills, taking care of a car, etc. Help your friend develop a relationship with a higher power that is intimate and real. Listening to uplifting and positive radio or TV is great, personal relationships with God is necessary. Don't be jealous of other friends. Having a circle of supportive friends is essential to overall mental health. You can not provide all sources of conversation, laughter, challenge and physical assistance. Don't be a martyr. Deal with your own fears and face your mortality. Your friends health crisis will remind you that you will one day die. Use that reminder to embrace life. The words delivered by friends begin the journey into our hearts and the seeds grow and change our panic into hope.

Hope is the anchor of the soul, our seat of emotions. Without hope, our emotions bounce from highs to low, lows. We despair and hate the lack of control that we have to pull ourselves up. Hope can be lost. It can be removed. It can be put at abeyance. Hope can be invisible.

Deal with the fear. Face it and resolve to examine it closely. One of the first issues I noticed in walking with my friend through her health crisis was the fear of developing any hope for healing. She bounced between wanting to give up on chemo. Giving up was easier than facing the possibility of having her hopes dashed. To have hope, one must have some reason to move forward. Her future did not involve her own family or ministry or job. But hope is not based on reason. Our lives must have value apart from our ability to produce. Hope is not part of an equation that we can solve.

If hope is not based on reason, then how can hope, which is a requirement for healing or emotional wholeness be dropped into our hearts? The key is to love life for the gift that it is and resolve to suck all that you can out of it. Hope comes to permanently change us so that we are married to our love of life forever. Live has value without any additional sense of worth because of what we may contribute to it. I had to communicate this to my friend by showing her unconditional love throughout the wrestling and emotional roller coaster ride we were both on.

Finally, face the facts. Ask intelligent and well thought out questions when you accompany someone to the doctor. THey will not be able to hear the doctor through the maze of emotions. Keep your own emotions under control. As much as you might hurt, the cancer victim is suffering more. Finally, build up your hope that there will be a future and that you both will be stronger as a result.

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