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The worst thing you can say to a cancer sufferer, and the other ways you're annoying them without realising it - as revealed by a bereaved wife
When my friend Jenna was diagnosed with cancer she knew that she would lose her breast and her hair. What she hadn’t expected was to lose a close friend as well.
‘I told Emma [a mutual friend] about my diagnosis and she looked shellshocked, swiftly finished her glass of white wine, said “I can’t do this again” and fled the house,’ says Jenna, 55.
‘She sent me a text later that evening saying: “I’m really sorry but I’ve been through all this with my mum and my auntie and I just can’t cope”.
‘I was very upset because I had held her hand for two years through a really messy, bitter divorce and now she wanted nothing to do with me. It was just awful. I felt like a leper.’
Cancer is very divisive: when you have that diagnosis, people are either thoughtful or thoughtless, kind or unkind, courageous or cowardly, which is what happened when my husband Harry was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer in 2012 at the age of 71.
Mary Gold and husband Harry, who was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer at the age of 71
The good friends were massively helpful – those who weren’t I no longer wish to have any contact with. One ‘friend’ slapped Harry on the back and said: ‘Liver cancer eh? Best have a large gin and tonic! Won’t do you any harm now will it? Har har!’. When Harry was gravely ill, in his last days, another (former) friend said to me: ‘It will be a huge relief to you when this is all over won’t it?’ Well actually, no it won’t.
I was reminded of all this recently when a friend was diagnosed with prostate cancer and I thought to myself, I’ve got to get this right. I didn’t want to be one of those people who crossed the road when they saw him.
This was something that previously happened to me and Harry in Canterbury, near where we lived. Those people had seen us, we had seen them, but they still moved as far away as physically possible.
I realised I wanted to be nice, humane and helpful. I didn’t want to be a cancer coward.
The brutal fact is that around one in two of us will get cancer, so it’s almost a given it will affect anyone’s circle of loved ones. To be better equipped to deal with it, we need to consider carefully how to approach it.
According to Dr Anna Janssen, a clinical psychologist and spokesperson for the British Psychological Society, behaving out of character around illness reflects the human instinct to avoid a threat to our survival. It’s not exclusive to cancer but applies to many conditions including motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s.
As she explains: ‘We don’t like to be confronted with anything that reminds us of our own mortality. We find uncertainty challenging, especially these days when we have so much technology, like AI, that offers us an illusion of certainty. It’s so much harder to cope with the idea where you think “I don’t know what’s going to happen here”.
Mary says friends and family who listened and offered practical help when Harry had cancer were their biggest support
‘Being told that someone has cancer may also remind us of illness and loss in our own lives, which we don’t want to revisit. But we need to acknowledge that and separate our own experiences from what’s happening to our friend.
‘We’re also scared of saying or doing the wrong thing, so people hesitate or stay silent, rather than cause offence at an already difficult time. But remember that when serious illness crops up, there’s already change and loss for that sick person, and they won’t want to lose the relationship they have with you.’
Dr Janssen recommends starting off with simple gestures – a hug, a phone call, a text message or a card.
‘Carry on being the friend you’ve always been,’ she says. ‘Listen and let the person who is unwell guide you on what they need.’
In our case, friends and family who listened and offered practical help when Harry had cancer were the biggest support and we were massively grateful for whatever was on offer. They brought lovely ready meals from M&S, took our then eight-year-old daughter on outings to the zoo and the seaside and helped with cleaning our house.
These acts of kindness made such a difference to Harry’s last days and ensured that ours never became a house of sorrow. When our little girl was in bed we did have a good few sobs but acts of compassion meant that we almost always had something to look forward to. My stepdaughters paid for me to have a spa day and another friend gave us a voucher for Harry’s favourite Indian restaurant.
While swerving to avoid speaking to a cancer patient you know is one thing, what I also didn’t appreciate was people who put their head on one side and pulled a funny face – cartoon sympathy is very annoying, as is rubbing someone’s back in a circular motion. There were also people who rattled on about themselves, which was almost a default mechanism, or who talked about relatives who had cancer – and had died from it. Do not do that!
Being thoughtless around cancer is alarmingly common, according to Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK.
Mr Ledwick, who manages the charity’s helpline, says that crossing the street to avoid cancer patients and their relatives is often an instinctive reaction, because people don’t know what to say or how to support someone with the disease.
Being thoughtless around cancer is alarmingly common, according to Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK
‘Most of us are nice people and we want to help anyone we care about but when someone tells us about a cancer diagnosis, we often bounce into reassurance mode, saying “I’m sure everything will be all right” - when clearly we don’t actually know that,’ he says.
‘So that is the one thing you shouldn’t do.
‘A better response is just to listen and say: “that’s really tough”.
‘Don’t try to come up with a solution because their life may well go off on a different tangent. Say optimistic things but don’t assume that they’ll be cured because it may not turn out that way. Just make them feel that somebody cares.
‘The person with cancer just wants to be heard and that’s what they need. The key thing is to be led by them: make realistic offers and don’t let your friend down. Offer lifts to hospital, help with shopping and babysitting and make sure you deliver what you’ve offered. Ask yourself what your skills are and what you can commit to.’
If you are considering offering practical things, such as taking a casserole round, Mr Ledwick recommends you check with them first that it’s ok, and never force an offer.
‘There’s a lot to be said for just being around for that person, having a chat, be their friend, offer a movie night,’ he says.
‘Don’t beat yourself up if they turn you down and don’t feel useless. You’ve offered. Someone going through chemo will feel rubbish and often they’ll look rubbish and may want to hide. They might just want to be left alone for a while but don’t forget to keep checking back in from time to time to ask how things are.’
The resentment I felt towards some people when my husband was ill was natural, Mr Lewdwick says, but for my own wellbeing I should really have let it go. He says: ‘If someone says or does the wrong thing - like crossing the road - don’t carry that anger because it’s bad for you. Focus on the friends who are helpful.’
My darling husband died in 2014, two years after his diagnosis. But I like to think that we made the very best of that time – trips in a boat down the Royal Military Canal in Hythe, wonderful meals in the Gurkha restaurants of Kent, where we live, and very happy Sunday lunches with dear friends and family who were not cancer cowards and who didn’t cross the road when we needed them most.
Cancerresearchuk.org