Accepting Help
Family and friends frequently want to help you, but they may need guidance. Identify what your needs are, and how friends and family can help.
Interactions with family and friends will depend upon everyone involved and the illness that you have. How you interact with family and friends may depend now upon how you interacted when you were well. Do you see family and friends offering their help as truly helping or creating problems? Can you cope with more people in the house? Is it hard for you to ask for help? Are you weak, do you fatigue easily, or can you get out of the house alone? Do you need help with showers and the bathroom? What else do you need help doing? Going somewhere by car? Doing household chores? Helping the children? Earning a living?
Kinds of help you might not have thought of:
being a gatekeeper for visitors and phone calls
tracking your medicines, especially for meds taken more than once a day or for drugs that change does frequently
making sure you have enough medicines
coming over just for small talk -- about their family, mutual friends, neighborhood events, or other topics
allowing you quiet time
Figure out what you need and who you want involved.
Do you have a partner, children, grown adults, or parents in the house with you? Can they help you? Spouses can become burdened by what is happening. Ask how they are doing. As the patient, suggest they have time for themselves to do what they want. Hugs are often very comforting. Family and friends will experience your disease very differently than you do. Commonly, family members want to do too little or too much. Some friends withdraw; some are overbearing in their desire to help. Sometimes, family members distance themselves because they fear they could have some of your problems. Don’t assume why they are distant. Ask. Different chronic illnesses have different effects on different people. Car injuries can cause difficulties in movement. Bowel illnesses may mean there is a colostomy. Some people are bothered by a wheelchair or a commode or hair loss. Discussions can let each know how the other(s) are doing, especially early on.
Try to be mindful of how your helpers are doing. People, including spouses, caring for you may be paying a price which is referred to as “compassion fatigue.” Ask if someone can get a gift, even a small one, for the caregivers.