It's a skill and passion that I've brought along with me as I've accompanied family and friends through cancer treatments. I'm your factotum when it comes to finding out what the medical professionals and people who have gone through cancer treatments have to say about mouth sores, nausea, Traceva rashes, cuticle and nail issues, constipation, diarrhea, night terrors, diet, hypnosis, aromatherapy, acupuncture as well as a host of other issues. It feels wonderful to put my research skills to use.
But I sometimes think it is also a very sneaky way of being emotionally remote. I have to watch that.
I think that we all try to protect ourselves a little bit when someone we love has cancer. I do that by being in constant motion. Always doing. Lots of times the information that I come up with is helpful. It does serve a purpose. Sometimes, however, I think that I am so busy doing that I miss opportunities to just be a friend.
I need to remind myself to slow down a bit. To listen more and talk less. I should stop viewing every statement that my friend makes as being a research assignment.
People need to say things out loud to help themselves accept those statements as the truth. Often reality comes to us in bits and pieces. As I read in a pamphlet on coping with bad news, "Sadness needs its own time to be."
I need to learn how to just be so that I can accompany my friends as they go through the process of absorbing the new reality of what is happening in their lives. That doesn't mean that I will stop trying to find ways to keep them from enduring the awful side-effects of treatment. My quests for answers and alternatives will continue. What I am going to try to do differently is to be more open to emotions and less afraid of where that will take us.
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