[Maria Svarbova]

For the past several years I was in a state of nonstop crisis. I experienced 9/10 pain daily and physical pain easily turned into mental anguish. I lost more friends than I gained and my family was not always supportive. But as I recover I find I get more questions from the friends and family of chronically ill people than the chronically ill themselves. It always goes, what can we do? And my answer is always the same: you can do a lot.

Here are some things that would have helped me:

1. Your Time: Spending time with someone who feels isolated from the world is, as they say, everything. IRL one-on-ones means so much. If you can’t do it in person then Skype or even a long phone call is something. A friend of mine with cancer used to just leave the Skype on all day for her friends who were suffering too and they would just chime in once in a while and go about their days, sometimes visible sometimes not but always available in case someone was needed. The gift of your time means so much.

2. No Tough Love: Tough love is some absurd Calvinist concept though brown immigrant families are certainly guilty too. No one is going to “snap out of it” on your clock. Melt that strategy away and think soft and flexible.

3. Listen: Actually listen. This is easier said than done because when I was at my most sick I talked in circles. Often I made no sense! I even knew it at the time but I could not help it. But my best friend of 35 years would often just let me ramble and vent and I would feel so much better after. She rarely interjected or offered solutions. She was just an ear at a time when I felt no one could hear me.

4. Ask Permission To Consult Others: Never ever do what one of my friends did and tell other friends my business in the name of helping. Unless of course you get permission and your whole point is creating a group effort to help. This really works and is often quite practical. When I had a concussion a friend set up a page online for friends of mine to log in what they could each help with. It made everything more organized and therefore more possible.

5. Go With Them to Appointments: If I had to think of the single thing that helped the most, this would be it. No one has more odds against them than a chronically ill person going to the doctor alone. There has to be studies on this! Everything shifts when there is a friend. Especially if the friend is taking notes and asking questions. Being an advocate this way really takes the burden off the patient. Many times I was simply too sick to talk and having a friend do the heavy lifting really helped. I even had friends play the bad cop to get things properly sorted.

6. Help Them on Their Terms: Simply ask what helps! For much of my illness, all I wanted was someone to go with me to the beach. This involved a ride and some time there, often a good half-day. Luckily I had friends who were into this.

7. Gift Them Things They Actually Need and Want: Ask them what would help and get this for them. Surprises are not helpful for chronically ill people. We often need way more things than we can afford.

8. Remind Them You Need Them Too: But not in a burdensome way! Normalcy is a real gift in sick times and if you can approach them like you would any friend, it helps remind them that they can also be someone outside their illness. At my sickest, I loved phone calls with friends 3000 miles away who were dealing with relationship or work drama and I was often so amazed I could offer help. I would remind myself of my old self when I would advise them and just that feeling was so precious.