4 Practical Ways to Help a Friend Battling Illness

When a friend gets sick, you can’t stop yourself from saying that tired old phrase: “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” It slips off the tongue before you have a chance to remind yourself how cliche and unhelpful it can be. Whether your friend has cancer, a chronic illness flare-up, or a bad case of COVID, they’re already exhausted and worn out. Now, you’ve just added to their enormous mental load by asking them to project manage their own care.

Even with the best intentions, generic offers of help are pretty much useless to a sick person. Unless you’re extremely close, they may not feel comfortable asking you to give what they really need. Even just gathering up the energy to delegate tasks can feel like an insurmountable hurdle to a person batting illness. Instead, make specific, tangible offers that take some of the burden off them. Here are some tips on how to offer real, practical help to a sick friend.

1. Send Food

If your friend is in the midst of a long hospital stay, it’s a pretty sure bet they’re sick of the food. They aren’t going to achieve their most optimum health and happiness eating dry hamburgers, bland noodles, and green jello. While you certainly can’t fix them with food, you can make them feel cared for by bringing them a nutritious meal or two. If you don’t have time to cook, delivery from their favorite restaurant works, and some get well soon gifts include great food options.

Eating gets even more complicated if your friend is at home trying to carry out their day-to-day tasks. Even with help, basic chores like shopping and putting together a meal can suddenly become a huge, painful challenge. They may also have dietary restrictions or symptoms that make it harder or impossible to eat their usual foods. If you can’t cook or can’t afford to bring takeout, try offering to do their grocery shopping for them or organize their kitchen cabinets.

2. Schedule Their Appointments

One of the worst, most frustrating tasks for many people battling illness from home is having to call a million doctors’ offices. From waiting hours on hold to dealing with rude receptionists to handling billing and insurance, it’s a nightmare. Your friend wants to read a favorite book or try and handle basic care tasks, but instead they’re glued to the phone. If they’ve got a mental illness, they may struggle getting organized or working up the motivation to make the call at all.

That’s where you come in: as a close friend, you can act as their illness administrative assistant. You can sit next to them, ID and insurance card in hand, and make all those tedious calls yourself. It’s not the most glamorous task, but your friend will likely appreciate it more than almost anything else you could do for them. To be extra helpful, you can also add their appointments to a shared calendar and remind them ahead of time — or drive them there.

3. Offer Chores, Errands, and Transportation

Aside from the doctor’s office, your friend probably has other places they need to go but can’t on their own. They might not have the energy to pick up prescriptions, pick up the kids, or grab their weeks-old dry cleaning. They might also want to visit other friends or relatives, but be too weak or sick to drive themselves. You can offer to give them a ride, or handle occasional errands for them. It’s up to you how much time you want to commit and what you can afford to give.

If transportation isn’t a good option, you can also offer help with basic cleaning and household tasks. You don’t necessarily have to do the actual tasks yourself if you don’t have the time or it’s not your thing. For example, you could do some light cleaning, or simply help them research and schedule with a trustworthy cleaning service. You could do their laundry yourself, or schedule a pick up and drop off service and help them get their laundry bag ready.

4. Be Their Advocate

If your friend is in the hospital, especially the emergency room, they may have trouble advocating for their needs. For instance, they may want to decline a medication that gives them bad side effects, but lack strength or confidence to tell the doctor. Or, they might have additional needs or difficulties, like needing to use the restroom more frequently, or having social anxiety. In these situations, you can be the one to stand up and speak up for their best interests.

As their friend, however, you’ll need to walk the fine line between health care advocacy and saviorism. In other words, you need to speak up for what they actually want — not what you think they need. If your friend asks you for something (within reason and hospital rules) accept their wishes and don’t try to contradict them. Don’t make them waste their energy arguing. Instead, act as an amplifier for their voice — even if that voice seems misguided at times.

Thinking Outside the Box

Being a good friend to a person battling illness is about thinking creatively, more so than anything. It’s coming up with the best solutions to the everyday problems they can’t tackle because they’re sick. Whether it’s dogsitting, doing their hair, or copying and pasting the same text message about their illness to all their contacts, everything counts. Anything you can do to make their life a little bit easier is always worth at least offering, to see what they say.

Just two caveats: first, make sure you get your friend’s enthusiastic permission before helping. You don’t want them, for instance, winding up with a bunch of food they can’t stomach because you didn’t check in with them first. Second: no matter how you choose to help, make sure you spend at least some time simply being with your friend. Your love and companionship (usually) means a lot more to them than whether or not their shirts are folded.