Don’t tell me I look good when I’m sick and miserable

deb says:

07:13am | 17/06/11

Well written,sick is sick,not nice at all.I sometimes look back at a time in my life when i had a massive seizure and lost my memory.For two terrible long years i struggled to pretend that i knew who? what and why? Funny thing was that others knew more about me than i did.Even now i have big gaps,holes in my life that i doubt will ever be filled.
So maybe not a terminal illness but still life changing.My IQ ? a joke these days.Me,who used to read every book i saw now have trouble remembering if i have already read it.
Saves a lot of trips to the library!

S.L says:

08:09am | 17/06/11

A mate from childhood died with bowel cancer in 2000. Because of distance and busy lives we hadn’t seen each other for 10 years but our group knew where everyone was and what we were doing. One day I get a phone call from another mate saying he had cancer and only had 2 weeks to live. I contacted another of our group in Sydney (who I hadn’t seen for nearly as long) and travelled down the next day to pick him up and we travelled up to the Blue Mountains to see our sick mate. Instead of the healthy 5ft 11” 90kg mate I’d last seen 10 years ago all we saw was a skeleton wrapped in skin. His first words when he saw me….....shit you’re going grey!   
Indeed he lasted only another 2 weeks and all the old faces were at his funeral. I still have his phone number in my mobile, I’ll never delete it.
Cancer is a terrible disease and I admire John Diamond for writing about his battle like he did.

Mayday says:

08:53am | 17/06/11

Great article and even better advice, thank you.

When my dad was in his last weeks a good friend of his always entered the hospital room with the words “how are you Frank, you look well?”

One day as this man left my dad became angry and said that if he repeated that statement one more time he would get up and punch him so that evening I rang his wife and explained the situation.

Fortunately on the next visit he stopped at “how are you” and then sat next to Dad, held his hand and cried.  Both men then spent a couple of hours together taking about the real issues that troubled them and their friendship was much stronger for it.

Dig deep and put yourself in the place of the sick or dying person and listen, its hard going but worthwhile and from my experience it leaves the people involved ‘lighter’ for the sharing of the pain and fear.

TChong says:

10:33am | 17/06/11

There is no wrong or right way to deal with these situations, that can be considered a definitive rule.
The dynamics of the people involved, ,and their relationships , should be the guide.
Complete avoidance of the topic might suit some, for others , facing the reality might be equally valid.
Hard and fast rules rarely work, or are applicable to something as multi layered as a person, and their loved ones facing such a situation.
ie- if you know the person well enough, then react in a way that is appropriate for the person(s) , and the situation.
My own experience though, is that everyone sitting around being miserable is of little value, to the sufferer , or their close family/ friends.
The western medical model, of people dying in a sterile , inpersonal ( thru necessity) enviroment of a hospital isnt the best, but culturally seems hard to break.

Gladys says:

11:34am | 17/06/11

I lost a mentor to lung cancer at the turn of the millennium. I visited him one last time, to find him on his couch looking out through the doors to the bush. It was January, stinking hot in Brisbane and he wore just a pair of shorts. You could count the ribs.

Rather than talk about his death, I continued our conversations about my life. It sounds egotistical, but he seemed to like to hear my ups and downs. His wife brought him a scotch, I had some plum cake and I had a good old cry knowing that I would never see him again. I started before I left.

When I left we kissed. I think he’d always wanted to do that. I didn’t say good-bye or adieu or anything else. I left.

I still don’t think I handled it very well.

Luce says:

12:19pm | 17/06/11

Thanks for posting this piece, and the link to John Diamonds last column. Everything said resonates quite strongly with me, as it seems to for most of the other comment posters, as one of my own family members is facing such a situation.

Illnesses such as these are a terrible thing, the effect of which ripples out from the sufferer, through everyone that cares for them. Its sadly ironic that we, as you say, allow ourselves to engage in unhelpful behavior due to our desire to fix the situation. Learning to be more sensitive to the needs of your loved one in pain takes time and patience, and open ears. I’ll admit I’m only part of the way there, and can only hope that when the time comes, I’ll know how best to handle the situation, not for my sake, but for his.

JaneE says:

01:54pm | 17/06/11

My husband died last year aged 43 years, 13 years after being diagnosed with cancer. We were very fortunate that he was quite well between treatments and we had a family, established successful careers and lived a very good life in that time.
We chose not to embrace the warlike metaphors that abound during such an illness, and I rejected them completely after his death. To say he lost his battle with cancer would have given the disease far more power than it deserved. It was not the centre of our life, but rather an unwelcome intruder in our life, to be tamed when necessary and otherwise ignored. We are left with lovely memories.
Thank you for an excellent article and links. I particularly enjoyed John Diamond’s last post.

stephen says:

09:23pm | 17/06/11

Ten years ago my mother rang me, crying, and said my father should stop dictating from the bed after double heart surgury, and he, getting well, sat up, and put emphasis on her that she should share his burden.
I hate to say it, but so many things are political, still.
Sickness suffers the present atmosphere : some are more equal than others.

acotrel says:

09:46pm | 17/06/11

It’s important to seize every opportunity to communicate with your loved ones while they’re alive.  I lost my two sisters to breast cancer.  There are still things I’d like to talk to them about.

Hellonathan says:

09:05pm | 18/06/11

I’ve nearly died so many times through accidents. Multiple electrocutions, head on car crash, fell off a cliff on my mountain bike. All my experiences with avoiding death have been pretty quick, apart from the cliff, that did some damage. I think the problem is that the difference between dying slowly and quickly is the amount of bloody thought we put into it. Each time I was dying I always thought “oh, this is surprising, bugger” and then in the subsequent survival “you must be kidding!” The response from family and friends has been much the same. Anyway, good luck to the dying reading this, take heart from me, sometimes you survive when you’ve seemingly got no right to.

atthepub says:

06:56am | 19/06/11

When my mum was dying, she pretended all was well (we all deal with things our own way). I wasn’t able to visit her in hospital myself at the time. Just the same I decided to get to the bottom of it and find out why the doctors didn’t allow her to go home etc etc.

Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing at the right time or it may be right for you and not the person dying or the people around the person dying.

Half my family still won’t talk to me now years later for me not visiting my mum on her death bed or at her funeral. I was in hospital with an inoperable ruptured appendix due to septicemia, kinda hard to move around in that situation.

My point here is that it is obviously important to cater as much as possible to the needs of a dying person however you are a person too. My mum pretended that all was well (to everyone) and I wanted to say goodbye if that indeed was the situation. So I frantically phoned doctors trying to get my mum any help she may have needed. Meanwhile she was slipping away.

And yes we had a good relationship. Praise God I had closure because we’d always had a good relationship. With death dying and illnesses, things hardly ever are that straight forward that one can follow a formula.

Be kind, be true to yourself, try to accommodate where you can, be kind to the sick person whilst staying true to yourself; realise that you’ll need some kind of closure.

Thanks Lucy, thought provoking article.