I Can Help, But How?

How can you help chronically ill friends?

News flash:

Thoughtful storm observers already spend time helping their dweller friends.

 Often these caring observers want to assist even more; they just don’t know how. Helping the invisibly disabled can be as simple as a phone call letting them know they are remembered or as involved as weekly assistance or as expensive as investing in adaptive equipment. Since we dwellers can also be observers, we need ideas too.

Six levels of involvement

• Little time:
  • Say hi at school or church or work.
• Some time:
  • Take your friend to a park and enjoy some activities.
• Ongoing time and effort:
  • Take a meal to a family every single week.
• Not much time, but ongoing involvement:
  • Consistently email a friend or family member showing that you remember him.
• Intensive endeavor:
  • Move in with someone who lives by herself to be a full-time caregiver.
• Occasional time, lots of work:
  • Get together with a group and spring clean a house.
• Financial undertaking:
  • A church, whose pastor’s wife was disabled, raised the money for a specially equipped van.

All too often, people that are disabled by chronic illness have no one to help out.

So, how can you help chronically ill friends?

To summarize: Be there for them. Validate their importance as a person. Be a friend; that may be their biggest need.

Examples of how people helped me throughout these years

• One friend addressed and signed all our Christmas cards one year (before the days of computers).
• One lady called me every week for a while.
• At one church, a friend cleaned our house every week. At another church, several ladies took turns cleaning.
  

  Deep cleaning - Yea!
  It's been a long time!

• Several friends sent me notes by mail frequently.
• A few very good friends were available to come help at a moment’s notice.
  • Sometimes to help me finish making cookies when I overestimated my energy.
  • Other times, I unexpectedly needed help cleaning.
• When Joe was incapacitated, several friends provided transportation for me to my medical appointments and for me to visit Joe in the hospital.
• When Joe had his surgeries, people worked together to provide meals and housecleaning; they helped with yardwork and dog care; they took me grocery shopping.
• Women helped me walk out to my car when I overdid it and could not walk by myself.
• A group of women banded together and deep cleaned my house once a year.
• A more involved form of assistance occurred when we camped near a town where we formerly lived. Several friends invited us to a restaurant for a meal where I overdid it because I was having so much fun. One couple noticed and helped Joe get me to their car, then took us to their house where I promptly had an episode of partial paralysis. This couple fixed me up to recuperate while they visited with Joe and then fixed another meal for us. By then, I could walk again and we returned to our RV.

In Short

A little assistance goes a long way in enabling a dweller to participate more fully in life. Besides the practical effects of helping physically challenged people, it encourages them, supports them, and affirms their value as a person.  There are as many ideas to help a friend as there are people to imagine helping.