Advice for best friend with Breast Cancer
Advice for best friend with Breast Cancer I have been careful as to what I’ve written on this forum as I’m aware my best friend accesses this site too. Basically my dearest friend was diagnosed with breat cancer last year (she is in her early 30’s) and I am a high profile nurse with a fair amount of knowledge with this situation. I am gravely (and I mean gravely concerned) for my friend. I don’t think she is tellling me the full picture of her condition-she is giving me snippets of information and even at that it is very worrying i.e. poorly defined tumour, 8cm in size with lymph node involvement and is going for a radical mastectomy She is having her lymph nodes removed, she’s had pre-surgery chemo and having post-chemo treatment. She is also having radiotherapy post surgery. My friend has been told she has an aggressive tumour which is poorly defined.
I just don’t know how to support her. I am not a nurse when I speak to her-I am her best friend and I love her to death but (and I don’t want to be scaring anyone on this site) I am worried about her prognosis, which quite frankly is not good reading between the lines. I don’t think she is divuluging as much info to me as I would expect her to as I think she’s worried about telling me things as I’m a nurse. I just want to support her as much as I can as I love her so much but I just don’t know how to handle this situation. I’m scared she asks me difficult questions which I don’t think and I’m definitely not able to answer. I just don’t know what to do. This situation has been going on for months now and I would grateful for any advice. Thank you for taking the time to read my posting.
For tayberry Hello tayberry,
I am sorry to hear you are so troubled in knowing how to support your friend the best you can.
May I suggest you telephone the BCC freefone helpline as the staff here may be able to help you overcome your problems both from a nursing point of view and from a best friend point of view and help you get the right balance between the two. The staff on the helpline are either breast care nurses or people who have experience of breast cancer. The number to call is 0808 800 6000 the lines being open Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm, Saturdays 9am - 2pm.
I hope this is of help to you.
Kind regards
BCC Host
Why not be up front explain to her your dilemma and say you want to be there to listen to her fears and give her emotional support but if she has medical questions you’d rather she talk to someone else.
I have a friend who had already had breast cancer when I was diagnosed. I wanted her to go to hospital appointments with me but she found it very difficult as it bought everything back. I can understand that.
Even if she does have a very bad prognosis she has to get on with things. Personally I’d rather know as it gives you options then about how you live the rest of your life. But there you are. Anyone with breast cancer is probably only too aware of the future being uncertain. I now put myself first and do things now rather than later, yet I have what is meant to be a fantastic prognosis.
Mole
tayberry , if other approaches fail, I think you’ll hear the most worrying bits and as you know a lot from the little you’re told you could feed in advice and info as friend gives info snippets.
Hope it all turns out a lot better than it looks.
If it’s any consolation prognoses aren’t everything- some of us do better than expected on bad ones and sadly ladies with good ones can be disappointed. Best wishes to you both, dilly
Hello Tayberry,
I am sorry to hear that you are in this difficult situation. My daughter is a nurse and I am a medical secretary so we have a lot of knowledge between us which can sometimes distort our relationship.
I am a fairly optimistic person and made a conscious decision not to spend the rest of my life worrying about my prognosis - I had a very aggressive cancer which was up against my chest wall with all the implications that go with that but fortunately, my lymph nodes were clear. I also decided not to have chemo because my daughter is getting married in June and I wanted to be well enough to help her with the preparations, I’m not very good at being ill!
My daughter and I have very brief, intense conversations about my treatment, mood, pain etc. and then I say, stop - and we resume our mother daughter relationship which is what I want from her. I haven’t told her everything, I have to come to terms with the information I have been given first and this can take a while - I like to think things through before discussing with my family and friends. Most of all, I don’t just want to be a cancer patient, I want to be me!
What I am trying to say is that your friend may not yet have accepted or reconciled what she had been told, she may not be ready to discuss her illness although she knows you have all the information at your fingertips. She knows your friendship is deep and true and you can help her a great deal in the future if and when her illness progresses.
With love,
Lollypop
Hi tayberry I’m sorry you feel in such a dilemma.
Everyone is different in their response to breast cancer. When you say you are gravely concerend I guess you mean that you are scared your friend is going to die, scared for her and scared for yourself. Nurses are just as likely as anyone else to be scared of death, and I think because nurses often see the bad end of cancer cases they can be more scared than people who are not health professionals.
I think all of us with cancer know at some level what might happen to us. But we vary tremendously in the degree to which we can face the reality of our prognosis head on, or want to talk about it. There is no moral superiority involved in in ‘facing the whole truth’ even though those of us like myself sometimes behave as though there is. Also I think many of us try to protect friends and family from our own worse fears so your friend may not be talking to you because she’s trying to protect you…and it sounds like you are trying to protect her (and people who read this forum because you say you don’t want to scare us either!)
Your friend may or may not know or want to acknowledge her prognosis…there are no right ways to respond. Whichever it is remember that in any case even those with the worse primary bc prognoses can fall the good side of dire statistics. (this has happened to me so far touching all the wood in the world)
I think you have to take your lead from your freind. Listen to her, try to understand what she understands and accept that, offer her friendship, help with the little things and the talking will follow if that’s what she wants. And find your own support too…it is very hard for our friends and loved ones and you need your own support networks and places to talk about your fears.
I don’t know what field of nursing you are in, but I hope that your experience with your friend will help make you an even wiser and better nurse. Medical knowledge and know how is one thing, but being able to communicate well with people who are ill is a different kind of skill.
best wishes
Jane
Hi tayberry
I am very sorry to hear about your friend’s diagnosis. It must be difficult for you wanting to help but feeling she is holding back from you.
However, I have to say I agree with Jane. Painful as it must be to worry about her prognosis, at the end of the day it is her perogative to choose what she hears and what she doesn’t. We all cope in different ways and, for me, attempting to work out my prognosis just made me depressed and anxious.
As Jane also points out, women with a poor prognostic outlook often live for a very long time and never recur or metasticize. Each of us has to believe we will be one of the many who defy statistics.
I imagine your friend already knows that in some ways her pathology isn’t the most positive. That’s probably why she’s keeping stuff back from you. You don’t say whether or not you work in the oncology field but even being a high profile nurse you will have access to knowledge that may just scare the bejesus out of your friend.
She is still early in her journey and has a lot of things to get her head around. She may start opening up more once the shock of diagnosis starts to subside. In the meantime I suggest you only give her information if she asks for it.
Hope that helps.
Lola x