Seven Ways to Help Someone You Love Deal With Cancer
By Sharon Toh Shu Ren (19 Mar 2006)

This isn’t only my story. It’s a story you might hear from anybody who has seen cancer from a spectator’s perspective. My mother was diagnosed with cancer of the colon when I was 17 and died when I was 19. I hope this story in 7 short ‘chapters’ helps if you are ever in this position; even more, I hope you never are.

1. Don’t say the person “suffers from” cancer
Cancer is almost never a choice. Suffering almost always is. A cancer patient almost certainly will experience pain of varying intensities. Many, including my mother, choose not to suffer from it but instead to endure. Suffering brings on even more pain, this time of the heart and mind – which is often even worse than physical pain.

2. Don’t start making funeral plans
This sounds harsh, but it needs to be said. Being diagnosed with cancer doesn’t necessarily mean dying from it. Medical advancements in recent years, not to mention the possibility of divine healing, make it possible for cancer to be nothing more than a distant memory for many people. Don’t bring an atmosphere of doom and gloom with you when you see the person... like one person who passed my mother in the market soon after her surgery and said, “You’re up and about! I assumed you’d never get out of bed again!”

3. Don’t feel you have to be the clown
Your loved one has cancer, not clinical depression. Do not assume that the patient wants to be cheered up with plastered-on smiles, overly contrived jokes or, worst of all, enthusiastic plans for 10 or 20 years down the line. (Even if the person were depressed, this would not be the way to ‘cure’ him.) Just be yourself around the person – all he or she wants is to be able to be himself/herself around you. My mother’s sisters dared to joke with her about her hair loss and other painful things she experienced – but they never once felt that the jokes were what kept her going. It was maintaining the light-hearted view of life they’d grown up sharing. Life with cancer is, after all, just that, not a completely different life with a different personality and different rules.

4. Don’t evade the issue if he/she wants to talk about it
Ever hear the story about the dinner party which went on all night with an uninvited pink elephant seated in the room the whole time? The large pachyderm ate, drank, squirted water and snot out its trunk at guests and left large “packages” around the room, but everyone was too polite to state the facts. That this intruder was making a significant mess of things, that it would take some effort to get rid of it, and that they would be glad to help the host to get rid of it in any way possible.

Cancer can be a pink elephant of sorts – until the host (patient) decides to come clean and talk about it. Don’t deny your loved one his or her need to share the questions, doubts, fears and hopes that will arise after the diagnosis. The rare times that my mother spoke of her disease to me, I could tell she was touched that I never tried to change the subject but just listened. Never underestimate the value of a sympathetic, listening ear.

5. Don’t force the issue
On the flip side, if the host of the dinner party realises he’d rather not bore his guests with his plans for getting rid of the elephant, they should also respect that wish. My mother was an intensely private person and did not want people outside the immediate family circle to know about her condition. This wish was not always honoured, and this made her unhappy and put her on edge. Cancer is stressful and frightening enough on its own; help your loved one by making him or her as happy and comfortable as possible. Whatever you believe about the disease, treatment or prognosis, always honour his or her wish for privacy.

6. Be there
That’s all your loved one could ask for. Not around-the-clock vigil in which you get cosy in a sleeping bag in the hospital room, order room service for yourself from the nurses, and share the patient’s bathroom. That’s enough to justify calling for the men in white suits! However, he or she does need your presence; often enough to know that you remember to care, seldom enough for him or her to have solitude and/or time with closer friends and family.

7. Don’t spare the tears
If you feel the urge to cry sometimes when the patient is present, don’t beat a hasty retreat from the room (if you really must, say that it’s because of the beans you had for lunch and not that you’re afraid to cry with the person). A wise person once said that tears cleanse the soul; they may be good for your loved one, too. Just make sure you don’t turn this into a routine of daily crying sessions – if it’s wayang that you’re after, just turn on your TV. I don’t think my mother was upset when visitors, and even we, cried with her; she appreciated the candour and honesty. In fact, it was because we knew that crying was OK that we felt we didn’t have to cry as much. We humans are so contrary.

I suppose the bottom line to my story is just this: be real. Laugh. Cry. Listen. Love. Above all, live – and in so doing, help your loved one to live as well. It’s all he or she would ask from you.
 

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