How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick

This book is about what to do when your friend gets cancer or any other sort of chronic physical or mental illness.  Whether it's something that's come upon them suddenly, or it's something that they've had for a while but only recently decided to come out about, this book can advise you on how best to help them, as well as how to wrap your own head around it.   So if you have no idea what to say or do, how much to jump in and offer to help or how much to sit back and give your friend space--in short, if the whole situation scares you a little but you still want to stand by your friend and just aren't sure how--this book is for you.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin writes from her own experience of surviving breast cancer later in life, as well as from her years of through-thick-and-thin friendships. Throughout her recent bout with breast cancer, she became fascinated by her friends’ and family’s diverse reactions to her and her illness: how awkwardly some of them behaved; how some misspoke or misinterpreted her needs; and how wonderful it was when people read her right.  She began talking to her fellow patients and dozens of other veterans of serious illness, seeking to discover what sick people wished their friends knew about how best to comfort, help, and even simply talk to them.  From this compilation of experiences and wants, her own featured prominently in memoir-style "Interludes," she has created this book, hoping that it will help some of the other people out there who have been isolated by their illnesses, via and along with their friends and families.  Her tone is down-to-earth, friendly, and often funny, and unlike many books in this genre, there's nothing sentimental or spiritual about this one.  Instead, it's the matter-of-fact friend you need to help you be a better friend in a crisis, and maybe one day, it can help you coach your own friends through sticking with you when you need it most.

(This book may contain a small, black sharpie mark on the bottom edge, so that it can't be returned to a different wholesaler.)