What do you say to comfort someone who’s going through chemotherapy? Lee Barron has this advice.
Five years ago, I was diagnosed with stage 3b colon cancer after a trip to the emergency room and subsequent surgery to remove a tumor from my colon. Since that time, it has metastasized, and I have had several surgeries and rounds of chemotherapy. I have joined social networking support groups and have read and interacted with a range of patient stories.
When people hear I am undergoing chemotherapy or see me for the first time in a while, they will inevitably say, ‘You look good.’ It’s natural to want to say something encouraging to someone we know is struggling. And yet somehow, this very well-intentioned greeting is actually cause for frustration for myself and so many patients in the support groups.
I don’t look like the cancer patient that you see in the movies. I mostly look like my usual self, perhaps a little more tired-looking at times. The difficulty with hearing that I look good, is that I don’t feel good. I feel sick. I feel exhausted. My tongue tingles and things don’t taste as good as they used to. I have about 1/3 the hair as I did before and am constantly brushing fallen hairs off my clothes. Hearing that I look good makes these things seem insignificant, as though my internal struggle with this disease is not as hard as I feel it is, because on the outside I appear fine.
I know when any of us are trying to support someone who is going through a difficult time, we only want to say the right thing to help them feel a little better or to show that we are there for them. However, it’s easy to fall short of this, because how do you make someone who is terminally ill feel better? How do you comfort someone who has lost a loved one? Rather than feeling pressured to say something that will help fix the problem, it may be more meaningful to just say, ‘It’s good to see you.’