Sequestered Silent Support
Do you have a family member or close friend suffering from leukemia? While there are many topics covered here at There Goes My Hero, let’s discuss some of the unspoken emotional and mental voids your loved one may have:
- Isolation
- Fatigued beyond words
- Sadness, frustration
- Boredom
- Overwhelmed
- Self-critical, lack of self-worth
Being alone in the hospital is a recurring nightmare for patients suffering with debilitating disease and their energy-consuming treatments. Put yourself in their body, facing your common routines and issues of life with the addition of a cancer diagnosis; alongside secondary or even tertiary diagnoses. While compassion is a genuine trait, empathy goes deeper to the heart of someone’s distress. Empathy allows you to paint a vivid picture of yourself fighting for life, which is a more powerful motive than just niceties.
Things you can do to support your loved one suffering from leukemia:
- Educate yourself about Leukemia/Treatment Side Effects so they don’t have to expend energy doing so
- Ask their significant other, or other family member how you can assist
- Send books, word searches, crossword puzzles
- Write cards and notes of encouragement
- Text and email uplifting messages with silly pictures, realizing you may not get a response
- Find out a variety of healthy foods they like or dislike
- If preparing a meal, be sure to ask about any diet restrictions or food allergies
While this may seem too simple, you would be relieving these duties for both your loved one with cancer and their caregivers (providing respite care).
If you know your friend or close family member are having chemotherapy treatments or blood transfusions on a schedule, it may be courteous to not communicate during or just after treatment completion. Blood cancer treatments are terribly weakening to the point of exhaustion for most patients. While they understand you are just checking in with them to see their progress, sometimes being silent is so much more sufficient.
Let them rest, they need and deserve it after all they’re going through. Be respectful when visiting with them, keep it short and sweet. You can even say, “I am here for you, but I want to respect your boundaries as well, so whenever you’re tired just tell me and I will give you space to rest.”
Be a distraction for your loved one through this difficult chapter in their lives. Talk about topics of your day, weather, travels, schooling, social media posts and friend updates.
What does Remission Mean to You?
Certainly, the word remission signifies a decrease in cancer diagnostic results, however, there are many survivors who have been mistaken as someone who is or “should be” 100% recovered. No one holds this against significant others, friends or families; as they are just trying to be loving and compassionate and only want the best for their survivor’s life. That being said, their perception may be far from reality on behalf of the survivor. Empathizing means understanding it’s not about what you deem the remitted survivor wants to hear, rather just ask directly about how they are feeling. Sometimes, objectifying a situation based upon another, causes emotional turmoil for the cancer survivor.
Each patient with leukemia, or any form of cancer, is uniquely different from another. What you think you know, or see may not be true. For example, a kid who is running around the playground with a low-grade fever. You wouldn’t suspect they are sick, right? Unfortunately, physical, emotional and mental pain can be masqueraded in cancer survivors.
Peppering them with questions like: status updates, detailed questions about their progress and if the cancer will return are most-of-the-time unanswerable. If you truly don’t know what to say-it’s OK to stay silent. Your presence is the only support they might need in peaceful, silent moments.
When all else fails, if you don’t know what to do, you can always educate and donate your time, your blood marrow, or funds to help offset unexpected costs associated with cancer.
Written by: Hannah Darnell, RN, Compassionate Advocate