Having cancer can be isolating, and so incredibly lonely.
I know: I am a cancer survivor.
When I was 20, I was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkins lymphoma. While I was blessed to be supported by my parents, who never left my side, I did yearn to be a part of a community of other cancer patients. But, alas, I was unable to find such groups. To be sure, there was a plethora of online communities and forums where cancer patients and survivors would commiserate. I found some comfort here. In fact, I remember watching the valiant young YouTuber Charlotte Eades chronicle her journey with glioblastoma, a horrific kind of brain cancer. Though Charlotte tragically succumbed to her illness in 2016, her story has touched countless people.
Charlotte, though afflicted with something so much more life-threatening than what I was dealing with, made me feel less alone, and even less afraid.
Earlier this month, the Coalition to End Social Isolation and Loneliness partnered with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine to host the third annual Global Loneliness Awareness Summit in Washington, D.C.
The programming was full of inspiring and informative panels on how we can foster social connection. One panel in particular, however, caught my attention: Understanding Social Isolation & Loneliness Across Diverse Communities, with oncologist and chief patient officer for the American Cancer Society, Dr. Arif Kamal.
Dr. Kamal spoke eloquently about cancer being a “loneliness-producing event.” When someone is suffering, they so desperately need social connection. But, in many cases, sufferers are left to go it alone. Dr. Kamal described this kind of abandonment as “cancer ghosting.” Friends of cancer patients, he explained, often erroneously assume that the best thing to do is leave their suffering counterparts alone. This, however, couldn’t be further from the truth.
Dr. Kamal explained to me that social connection “improves outcomes” for cancer patients. “Survival, time on treatment, and quality of life,” he continued, are all made better by robust social connection.
In many cases, however, my own included, friends of cancer patients don’t know how to engage in this much-needed connection. “I just fundamentally don’t think that we’ve ever been taught how to connect to someone who’s going through a difficult thing,” he said.
It’s true. Many people around me, when I was going through my journey with cancer, didn’t quite know how to comport themselves in my presence.
In fact, the patient, and those around them, engage in what Dr. Kamal calls a “conspiracy of silence.” This is a lose-lose social dynamic wherein both parties are “staying silent because they believe they are helping each other by staying silent.” The cancer patient feels as though they have to be a warrior and show little or no display of weakness or vulnerability, and the friend feels as though they should not bother the patient. “They have enough to worry about; I should just leave them alone,” they wrongly presume.
There is no need for this unhealthy dynamic. We can, in fact, be there for each other.
We have to first start, Dr. Kamal explains, by “normalizing that people can be warriors, but also have an infantry with them.”
So, what can we do if our friends are suffering?
Though it may not seem like much, a text saying, “I was just thinking about you today,” can be immensely helpful. And that text can open up a more substantive conversation, perhaps over a phone call. Phone calls, U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy remarked in an interview with Business Insider’s Mia de Graaf, are more powerful than texts because you can hear the other person’s voice, and that connection is “stronger even if it’s brief.”
Making an effort to connect with those around us who are suffering is, perhaps, one of the most important things that humans can do for each other.
In The Spirit of Community, Amitai Etzioni recalls the time his neighbors came to his aid after he lost his wife in a car accident:
They brought over food; one couple spent the entire evening with me, although it was one of two evenings their son was home from college. Another dedicated his only day off from work to go to the car wreck and retrieve some documents, a task I could not face. They called on me frequently for weeks on end.
I know it can be uncomfortable to be there for a friend when they are suffering such unspeakable pain. As Dr. Kamal put it, “What is it that you say when you don’t know what to say?” The worst thing we can say, however, is nothing.
We must say something, and we must show that we care. A thoughtful text message isn’t a bad place to start.