121: The Absolute Best Response For a Friend Diagnosed with an Illness

A few weeks ago, I recorded a podcast about how to respond to a grieving friend. It was personal because a friend was kind enough to share her experience with me about the right things to say and to do for a friend who is grieving. This episode is no different. The topic is now how to respond to a friend whose life is suddenly upended by a serious diagnosis for themselves or for someone in their family. And the idea, the inspiration for this episode comes from the host of the podcast, Me. My Week, My Experience, My Advice. Welcome to the Confident Communications Podcast, where I help you find the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. In this episode, I'll share with you three takeaways for finding the right response at the right time as it relates to illness to help a friend or someone, you know, someone close to you, dealing with an illness. This is a personal episode. You're going to get a deeper look into my life this week. The messy parts. The reason why? Well, three reasons. Let me inject here. I did not get a death sentence. I'm fine. But my life was absolutely rocked this week and let me tell you, I had a terrible week. I learned of this diagnosis almost a week ago Friday, and that was just a bookend to last Thursday, just a few days ago, when I was pummeled again by a whole different type of situation. And that's for a podcast to be named later. But. But as far as weeks go, this one was a doozy. 2020 for me was bad, like for many of you, but it was really bad for me. Like soul sucking bad. And also 2021. Somehow we're only into February. It's even worse. My friend Aaron texted me at the hospital last weekend. More on this in a bit. And wrote, molly, I can't imagine when you're already doing so much and throw in s, you get to primal scream territory pretty quickly. That made me laugh because it was so true. Now this episode is personal, but the reason why I'm recording it is because one, I'm always looking for subject matters and topics that the listener might not typically come across unless you google it only when you need it. And two, many of you know that I like to riff on ripped from the news headlines, either in the news publication and broadcasts, or timely information like my personal news that I think might be beneficial to listeners. And lastly, it's just the timeliness I'm recounting a glimpse into a week of my life, the most by far challenging week of my entire life. And I've lived here For a while. And for perspective, anyone who knows me knows that I don't particularly have an easy life. I have a lot on my plate. I don't struggle. A lot of people struggle with life. I'm not gonna say I'm struggling with life. I have a great life. But I just have a plate that's always, always filled. And there's not a lot of room on my plate for things to happen or for the plate to completely fall and shatter. And people who know me well, they tend to laugh about the insanity of my life. You know, I do too, and how crazy it is. But this week was a challenge for me. So out of life's school of war, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. That's at least the way I look. And so that's why I don't say last week was the worst week of my life. The worst is like a tragedy. If something happened to my kids, that would be the worst week and I wouldn't learn anything from it. But a challenging week, you know, that's just that it's something, it's a challenge to be conquered and to learn from. I'm always looking for learning and I always like to share learning as as much as I can to help other people. And anyone who has received a shocking diagnosis knows that feeling. When you hear it, your body goes numb. The time between the words coming out of a doctor's mouth and it's settling in your brain is like watching a tsunami crusting over you while you're standing on the shore. You know you're going to get hit, you know it will hurt, you know it will cause a lot of damage. And the only question you're asking yourself is, will I drown? The tsunami that I came across happened in the emergency room at 3:45 in the morning Eastern time last Friday. But it wasn't directed to me, it was directed to my son. And like I said, it's not a death sentence. He's going to be fine. But you can tell from my voice it was a challenging week. So the backstory, my 16 year old son Connor is just the best. And he allowed me to share this on the podcast because he knew exactly what this episode was going to be about, that he knew it was going to help someone else. And he's just a great kid. And anyone who knows him like, says the same, you know, and all kids are awesome, right? Like all my kids are awesome. They're all great. All of our kids are awesome. Ask any parent, they're all great. But as Far as Connor goes, he's my only son. And I was just blessed with him because he's smart, you know, and he. And he just puts in effort into everything he does. He tests well, he's kind. He has great friends. He's just so well adjusted. He's absolutely obsessed with sports, which I love because he's my companion to Red Sox games and any type of game that we can go to. He's also very kind to his sisters. And I remind him that Tom Brady was raised with all sisters. And even when they're not so kind to him, he's a phenomenal athlete. He's almost an Eagle Scout, which we laugh about a lot, but he's an Eagle Scout. He also has a sports trading card business. He's obsessed with sports. And in fact, you can probably. You might even be able to hear a game in the background because he's a obsessed with the Premier League. He watches it on Peacock. So his. His right now, I think it's Arsenal and Leeds playing. I can hear them this morning it was ESPN plus Celtic versus, I don't know, St. John's Wood or something like that in Scotland. I don't even know. But he's like Fever Pitch obsessed. Anyone who has read the book by Nick Hornby or watched the movie with Colin FTH or Jimmy Fallon knows Red Sox are Arsenal. Like, this is Connor. Anyway, his plans for life was to graduate at, you know, near the top of his high school class. We never want to put that pressure on him. He wants to. He wanted to excel at sports and his goal was to play soccer at a military academy. He wanted to go to the same one that his sister attends. She plays soccer and lacrosse as well. And also just told me that her club hockey season on the men's team was ended. Was was felled by the coronavirus anyway, but that was his goal. He wanted to be at school with her at the same time playing soccer. And as a parent, I'm sure any of you who are parents or have been parents know like when your kid is settled, no matter what they're doing, whether they're away at college or when they found a passion that they love or when they know what they're going to do with college. It just. That settling feeling feels so good. And even last week on Wednesday, we had this long talk. You know, he applied to this summer program at the U.S. naval Academy and we were discussing his future and it just felt so good. I was like, so excited that he was just. He knew his direction. He wanted to serve his country, and then he wanted to serve in the front office of a major league sports team. Like that was his lifelong goal. But it was obliterated when the ER doctor told us that Connor's blood sugar was 10 times the normal amount and it was likely that he had type 1 diabetes. Actually, the doctor didn't say likely, come to think of it. He said, I don't have, you know, absolute proof, but looking at his body type and knowing, you know, his habits, it is type 1 diabetes. So my time as a parent, I can say without a doubt this was the most heartbreaking moment of my entire life. And I also know that I'm lucky because other parents have experienced far more heartbreak. But for me, watching the recognition come across Connor's face. When he realized his dream was over. He was stoic, but inside, I knew he was broken. I was broken. So anyone who has experienced this themselves or their kids or their parents, you know, good friends, sure, you're like me. You quickly file through your entire life and wonder, like, how is this going to affect you? How is it going to affect this person? What is going to happen now? What is our new now? For me, at that point, I had been up 22 hours when I got the diagnosis. I had given a training that morning, so I was up very early. And now I had to follow Connor in an ambulance on the drive down to Boston Children's. And I had kids. I had a dog at home. And I knew my energy and emotional fortitude was going to be tested, tested strongly this week. And that's why I'm recording this episode right now. And I know I often talk about, you know, response, public relations response, but I. I tell this to my kids often. And I said it to Connor in the ER room, too. I said, you are your own PR response. PR response isn't just for the professionals. It's for yourself. It's for your brand. Everyone has their own brand. Whether they own a business or they walk around on this planet, they have brand. And your character is your PR response. How you manage things, how you manage stress, how you manage the good and the bad, it's all about how you deliver it, right? Like, how do you respond and create that right response at the right time and how you deliver it in the right way. And so I'm providing this episode now for anyone who's going through this or who will go through this, and hopefully it will stick with you. It is sticky material, and I'm doing it. As you can tell, it's still very raw, but that's the reason why I wanted to record this podcast, because it's still in my brain and I'm likely going to forget most of it. And that will be just a defense mechanism. I think my emotion, my brain is going to willfully forget a lot of this just to protect me. So I wanted to record it so I could share it, because my goal is to help someone else, because I know. I know someone hearing my voice right now is going to go through a similar experience where they're going to hear news either for themselves or through a good friend or parent or something, and they're going to need to know how to respond. And so I want to help you. And what the illness or the chronic illness or the disease is, it really doesn't matter. It's when a person has to exist to think, process, execute, plan, support, survive. When resources are limited, you know, like sleep and food and support, people need tips for how to respond. So if you have a friend or anyone, you know, a colleague, someone going through it, I want to give you three things to say. The absolute best response for a friend or a loved one diagnosed with a serious illness. This applies to the diagnosis that rattles a person. It changes their life. And my lens, of course, is type 1 diabetes for a teenage boy. But the advice, I think, applies to all. I really do. And again, the caveat. This is just my experience. I could be way off right now. And also, I'm so tired. I'm still exhausted. I haven't eaten. I mean, I guess the good news is I'm at my lowest weight since I was, like, 23 years old. So there is that. I'm just still reeling from the news. So this is just my point of view, but I just feel like other people going through it would share it with me. So certainly when I post this, let me know, am I right? Am I crazy? Did it resonate? Let me know. Okay, number one responses for what to say. I'm gonna start with the don'ts. Start with the negative, the don'ts. I mentioned this on the grieving episode, what not to say when someone dies. And the word that I used was platitudes. It's in a platitude in the sense of when I said it in the other episode, I said what not to say to a person when a loved one dies, such as your loved one is now in a better place. That's like a platitude. Well, platitude exists across the board. They always come up. So in this context, don't Express comments that make it about you and your experience or your opinion. Don't say to someone, so again, in my lens, again, type 1 diabetes. Don't say, well, my friend's teenage grandson has a pump and she says it didn't change his life at all. Or the technology has improved so much. Or I remember thinking when Mary Tyler Moore, she had diabetes, didn't she? And I always thought, oh my gosh, she's going to be blind someday. And then it turned out she didn't die from diabetes. All right, those are all I know, well meaning. But here's the do people want you to express the true enormity of the situation? Don't feel like you need to soften the edges for the person they know how bad the news is. They want to hear that you recognize that it's bad as well. A reaction. I heard that was perfect. Oh no, Molly, that's just awful news. That's awful, right? Or when someone said, oh my gosh, poor Connor, oh my gosh, I can't believe that happened to him. He's such a great kid. Oh my gosh, Connor. Because a response like that, the person is touching me where my heart hurts most for my son. You want people to meet you where your heart is, how it feels, which is completely broken. I want people to know that. And the people who speak to me knowing that are the ones who are speaking to me when it means the most. I'm taking it all in. So the bottom line is people will reflexively want to quickly bypass the bad parts and they only want to focus on the good. But remember, meet the people where they are, not where you want them to be. 2 Here's a response message for offering support. Here's the don't first. Ah, don't. When someone shares a news about shares the news about a newly diagnosed disease or illness, don't let your first response or a primary response be offering the name of a person who is dealing with the same disease. Or tell them you're going to put them in touch with a person dealing the same disease. I know, I know it comes from the heart. It never comes from a bad place. It comes from a good place. Again, it's reflexive. I know this. When a person hears of a dreadful ailment, I'm no different. I am no different. They immediately scan their brain for the person they know who went through the same element, you know, went through the same, you know, disease or the same ailment. They want to help. But think about it. Every single person knows someone With a disease. Every one of us knows someone with cancer. Every one of us knows someone who's died of cancer, knows someone who has Covid. And it turns out almost everyone I know knows someone with type 1 diabetes. And your thought is you feel like an ungrateful jerk when you don't want to hear about someone else's friend. But people who are dealing with a new diagnosis, either themselves or someone in the family, like me, like a parent, I am in a barely survival mode. I am truly just getting by day to day. I am drowning. The last thing, the last thing that I want to do is to call a person who I don't even know to ask them questions about someone in their life who I don't even know. Honestly, even on my best day, when I have all the energy in the world, I know I'm likely never going to want to do it. And honestly, in my case, I think this week, 99% of the people who I've mentioned it to. No, I'm going to ratchet that down because not everyone, maybe 95% of the people has mentioned someone that they know that has type 1 diabetes. And many of them offered to help them or to help me get in touch with them. And so, again, I know it comes from a place of care, but I know that people. I appreciate that people are telling me this. Okay, that's my first thought, is, wow, appreciate that someone wants to help. I see the help. So how you can respond when someone does this is by seeing the help. Hey, I appreciate the contact. Thank you so much. But right now, so many other people have. Have shared names with me, so it's so comforting to know that I have so many resources. But I'm set for now, and I will certainly let you know when I need the help. Okay, so that's one response. Another thing not to do is don't email a person you know with the disease and then copy the new patient on the email. Again, like, you know, I want to set you guys up. You know, she just was. Her son was just diagnosed. And I know your son was diagnosed 15 years ago. So I want you two to be able to talk. You know, again, like, it's so nice, but now it's like I have something else on my plate. And seriously, like, all week I keep thinking about this email. Like, I've got to call this woman, or I have to respond to this woman. I have to reply to this woman. And that I don't even know. So you don't want, you don't want to do that to people. So you want to tell people that you care, but you never, ever want to add to the burden, okay? So trust me on this. Now here's a do. And I never, ever, ever, ever would have thought of this until it happened to me. So that's why I'm sharing it. If you want to offer your contact, as soon as someone tells you, so let's say you're telling someone you have this diagnosis or someone close to you has this diagnosis, I guarantee you the person you're telling will tell you, hey, I know someone who had this diagnosis. What say is this. This is what I would like you to do. Could you please contact. Would you please contact that person and ask them if there's anything that they wish they would have known in the first week, in the first days of diagnosis that would have helped them tremendously? Are there any pro tips that they can share? And then you can pass them along to me by email or text. That is a way where your friend can be helpful and still help you, but the burden is no longer on you. All right, next number three. This is just a response for how to help, okay? And here's a big don't. Just don't make the person's life any worse than it already is, okay? Give the person who's just been diagnosed with something or their parent or, you know, their child, whatever it is, just give them clearance. This is not the time to discuss stressful matters. Stressful family matters. No negativity, no big projects. If someone dropped a ball on something, I'm not saying this is me, but if someone was dropping the ball on something, don't remind them of it. Don't add to the overwhelm to this person. Because this person, trust me, is completely over overwhelmed. They are raw. Anywhere that you can step in and help them and give them a pass will go a long way. This is not the time to criticize that person. This is not the time to gaslight that person. This is not the time to throw out passive aggressive statements about this person. This is not the time, trust me on this one, to go through a major negotiation in your life. It's just not the time. So here's the do find a way to make the person's life better. Simple as that. Just make it better. Because their life already, pardon the language, their life already sucks. Okay? It's bad. What can you do to make it better? The first day that I came back from the hospital, I was in the hospital all weekend. So all told, I was up 40 hours straight. And for anyone familiar with type 1 diabetes, in the initial diagnosis, you have to do, like, math. You have to do these ratios, these carb ratios, and you have to make up food. Like, you have to look at the serving size and the carbs, and you have to do the math. And so this is math that you don't even want to do on your best day. This is not math that you want to do even if Khan Academy was constantly playing in your head. And when you're exhausted, this is like the worst kind of math. Like, when someone's life depends on it, it's like the most stressful math that you can do. But the whole weekend, it was all about education, you know, making sure that I was up and running to be able to take care of my son. And it ended with me driving home through a blizzard. And I'm sure many of you were dealing with this weather, but Boston was hit with a blizzard during the super bowl when we were watching Tom Brady, and Connor just wanted to get home and watch the Super Bowl. He wanted to see Tom Brady in the Super Bowl. And moms know you will do anything that you can do to get home. And as a complete aside, I had to pull over his favorite restaurant, Sonic, to get his favorite mozzarella sticks. And so the very first time I had to do insulin was in a sonic drive through. So that's the kind of mom I am. But anyway, I had mentioned in the grieving episode about food trains, and, hey, I'm just gonna let my dog keep barking in the background. This is just a raw, real day in the life of Molly. But in the grieving episode, I had mentioned a food train. And I. People need food trains. They just do. And I was also right. It's not for the person probably who's dealing with the stress themselves because their appetite is gone. For dinner this week, I ate, for the most part, my dinner every night was gluten free Oreos. Oreo just came out with gluten free Oreos. And I think I had that for dinner two nights in a row. But people who dropped off food. So my friend Kathy was the very first person to drop off Italian food for the family. And oh, my gosh, it was a life saver. Okay. Cause I'm still exhausted. Like I said, it's. I mean, it was a week ago, but I'm still exhausted and I've been in a fog all week. So the biggest challenge for me was dinner. It was making food. Not only now, you know, for my son, where it's Low carb. And then I have celiacs. But I needed my daughters who are healthy and have all their activities. They had hockey all week. They needed food as well. So when the food started coming in, I was just, I was so pleased. So that is something that you can definitely do for people, is just drop something super easy offer them and also letting people. Because this is all about the response. It's not a podcast about dropping off food, but again, it's about the response. What that response means is that I'm thinking of you. Any token that you can give, that you can send along. My friend Kelly dropped off, gave Connor. The poor kid is just sitting at practice on the sidelines. Can't practice yet. He doesn't have the energy. And she gave him a Men's health magazine and a PlayStation gift card. And she had said to me, I'm not gonna give him a busted gift like sugar free Jolly Ranchers, like that's a dig. But she was concerned about. She knew that Connor was concerned about getting his muscle mass back because he lost so much weight. And that magazine absolutely made his day. And it is a cliche. It's the thought that counts, but it's not a cliche when it really, really does. People do need you and they're often just too exhausted to ask. So the last tip for this one, as it was for the grieving episode, just anticipate needs, that's. That's always the best response, is anticipating needs. So the bottom line, much of the time when people are looking for, when they have to share news about an illness, they have to deliver some type of response. People don't know what to do and what to say. I know this. But all the person is looking for, and I can say this firsthand experience, we're just looking for compassion. That's it. No pity, no solutions, no unsolicited advice only when asked. And especially no judgment. Okay? Just a listening ear, maybe a hug in a post pandemic world. But just, I'm here for you. Not call me if you need anything, but I'm here for you and make sure that you are. If they want your opinion, if they want your suggestions, they will ask for it. My friend Karen's daughter is a type 1 diabetic. She's friends with my daughter Quinn. I knew in the hospital, I need to call Karen. Karen wrote to me before I even wrote to her on text and said, I'm here for you. That's really all you need to know half the time that people understand, they recognize the enormity of the situation and that they will always take it into consideration, whether it's a scary cancer diagnosis or even just a chronic illness. You know, people want a listening ear. My perspective. I have celiac's disease. I've had it for, I don't know, 10 years, 11 years. I was old enough where I knew it really stunk. I don't like hearing people tell me, oh, but you have so many foods available at grocery stores. Yeah, if I want to eat gluten free brownies and cakes, sure. But really for the most part, like when I travel, it's a nightmare trying to eat on the road. But the person who invites me to their house and they have gluten free food there, trust me when I tell you, people never ever, ever forget it. When Kathy put in gluten free ravioli for me and my gift for my son and my daughters, I will never forget that she did that. So remember that you know people, it's not just now that they need you. It's the person through the weeks and the months and the years following this diagnosis. The highs and the lows. It's as crucial to be there then as it is in the beginning. Any disease is like a marathon, true, but it's like a sprinting marathon. It's like running a seven minute mile from minute one to minute 26. It's hard every mile. There are no water stops and it's every day and it's constant. So people are always looking for people who can help, people who are accommodating. So this obviously was a very personal episode, but there's always a thread to finding the right response at the right time and delivering it on the right channel. Last week provided me with a lot of insight. My eyes are still very blurry. Like I still can't see straight. That's how tired I am. I can't focus. But boy, I have a better vision and insight than I have ever had before this week. Week. Because if last week, last two months, last year has taught me anything, it's about people. It's about judging a person by their character, about how they treat you in times of stress and heartbreak compared to how they treat you in the good times. You can see love and support very clearly with people and in the hard times is you see it so clearly. But also you see the selfish, you see the people who really only think of themselves. So character, hmm. That can always bleed into the public space. Am I right? So I'm working on an episode right now about character, about blame and Last night I was watching the framing Britney Spears documentary. Oh, my goodness, this is a must watch. I'm gonna be doing a future podcast on it. But I was only a few minutes in, and I could tell right away in my fog, you know, who were the helpers and who are the people that harm? I'm sure many of you have seen recently Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers advice. Whenever something tragic happens, you'll see this meme. Look for the helpers. You know, Mr. Rogers said in Mr. Rogers neighborhood, when I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news and my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You'll always find people who are helping. So before it was an appropriated meme, you know, that pops up whenever there's a tragedy, like a shooting. It was really meant at the time just for preschoolers. In its most basic form, it was a message for when you're dealing with stress and breaking it down to a simple, almost childlike moment. When in stress, look for safety, look for the helpers. The same applies when you are in stress, look for your helpers. People who are in need will always remember the people who helped. They will always know they can go to you for comfort. The people this week who helped me in a lot of different matters, let me go back to my week. I've had a week. They know that they've helped me. They know. And to the people who add to the stress, these people will know that, too. They will never forget. They will likely be phased out. They might come back in when there's a time that they can deal, you know, when the person can deal with them at full strength, or they might just be phased out altogether. And here's another insight for the people who don't reach out. And I know a lot of people are out there like, ooh, I don't even know what to say. I don't want to say anything. I'm going to remain neutral. You know what? It's okay. Not everyone needs to know, because even at this perspective, I'm only a weekend and I haven't told you anyone. Like, it's funny. I'm telling you, the listener, more than I've told, like, some of my best friends what I've been dealing with this week. And it's not because I don't want to share it with them. I mean, I'm telling you, like, I have really, really good friends that deserve to hear this news from me, but it's only because I just don't have the energy. And I was Sharing it as an as only as an unneeded basis. And as to no basis. It's people who I was, you know, people who I was already talking to that week, or people who I already happened to be in it, like a weekly tech stream with. So when it does happen, and you always wonder, like, why didn't they tell me? It's. It's usually not you at all. It just means that they didn't have the energy to get to you. Because when you have to, when you have to share news with a person, it means that you have to relive that experience just to tell the person the news. And people have to kind, you know, to g themselves for it. And sometimes you just don't have the energy. So never, ever take offense to someone who shares news with one person and not with you. Sometimes it's only in the time, timing, and another thought, a last thought. I'm not saying this from personal experience, but if someone is going through something and they know a person knows that they're going through it, yet they never hear from that person, I think it's fairly accurate to say that they'll never forget that. You've heard me say it often on this podcast. I say it in tweets as well. This is just a PR response that silence oftentimes is the loudest response. But the absolute best response for a friend diagnosed with an illness or for a friend whose loved one has been diagnosed with an illness is just compassion and letting them know that they're there, that you're there, and just anticipating needs, it's just showing compassion. So thank you for letting me share a personal story from my week. It's a good release for me. I really wanted to do it because I know, I know that this episode is going to help someone because you're going to hear it and you are going to know precisely the absolute best response to deliver to a friend diagnosed with an illness in their life. Thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.