Others who need outside help pick one or two close friends who have indicated that they would be available emotionally to provide comfort and support when it is needed.
Deciding What to Say Although it can be hard, it makes sense to be open and direct with your family and close friends if you feel comfortable doing that.
Without candor and openness, concerned relatives and friends are left with their own darkest imaginings. They have their own fears and frustrations that will only grow into terrifying phantoms if they are left behind a veil of secrecy and ignorance of what you are really experiencing. The mutual confrontation of fears is a good way of keeping your own fears and the fears of others under control.
Being open doesn't mean that you have to start every conversation with the story of your latest aches and pains. Nor, if someone asks how you feel, do you necessarily have to answer with a long, detailed description. The litany of the person who wants sympathy or empathy—"I've got it bad. It hurts here and here. I've got to get this treatment"—makes a lot of people want to avoid you. People with cancer are often avoided because, by their own conversation, only bad things seem to happen to them.
Another person in our experience—a military man and pharmacist who had lymphocytic leukemia and, concurrently, colon cancer—was a very open, extroverted person. But if someone said to him, "How do you feel?" he always said, "I never had it better in my life." For him, this was a great opener, ending any
