Your Friend's Keeper?

You've survived cancer. Now a friend develops the same type of cancer and is making horrible decisions (in your opinion). She's declining conventional therapies for a treatable cancer or deciding against telling her children she is sick. What's a good friend to do?

Your distress is understandable:

• You want your friend to do as well as possible.
• You don't want your friend to suffer unnecessarily.
• You want to keep your friend from ever saying, "I wish I knew then what I know now."

But often your anxiety is not only about your friend. Any of the following can also be playing a role:

• You fear the pain of watching your friend suffer.
• You fear seeing the suffering and end result you already fear for yourself.
• You fear the pain of grief, should your friend die.
• You want to avoid ever saying, "I should have found a way to convince her/him."
• You don't like feeling helpless.

Four of the most challenging pages I've ever written are published under the heading, "Important Message to Parents, Friends, and Extended Family." (pp. xvii-xx in When a Parent has Cancer).

I suggest boundaries for offering advice and offer tips for ways to get the information to the patients (or to influential people in the patients' life). "Ultimately, it is their life and they have a right to live it their way. Recognizing and respecting your limits in their lives is one of the ultimate expressions of love." 

Comments

[Kate]

My husband has a cousin who was diagnosed with breast cancer and was choosing an "alternative treatment route". I completely disagreed with her decision but it's her journey. Her family was all over her and I tried very hard to help them understand that she has to go with what she thinks is the best decision for her. Not for me or for them, but for her.

Amazing how difficult that can be to have people understand isn't it?

[Kairol Rosenthal]

I butt against this problem often. For me, I try to evaluate whether the newly diagnosed patient has all of the information about the benefits of conventional treatment. Or in the case of a close family friend, does she understand the difference in survival rates for her cancer between being treated at the crappy local hospital six blocks from her house vs. being treated at an NCI center three miles from her house?

I do find kind ways to tell others how their odds at survival are increased by taking proven treatments or by getting care at NCI centers. What they do with that information is up to them. I know when to give my opinion and after that I back away and just give them love.

I do not have respect for unintelligent decisions that people make about their care. And I do judge these decisions. However, I realize to each their own and there are plenty of patients who put other values above intelligence when deciding their course of care. I still love the person, wish them well, and give them my support in their battle.

Great topic as always!

Kairol
http://everythingchangesbook.com/