How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who's Sick

Everyone knows someone who’s sick or suffering. Yet when a friend or relative is under duress many of us feel uncertain about how to cope.

Throughout her recent bout with breast cancer, Letty Cottin Pogrebin became fascinated by her friends’ and family’s diverse reactions to her and her illness: how awkwardly some of them behaved; how some misspoke or misinterpreted her needs; and how wonderful it was when people read her right. She began talking to her fellow patients and dozens of other veterans of serious illness, seeking to discover what sick people wished their friends knew about how best to comfort, help, and even simply talk to them.

Now Pogrebin has distilled their collective stories and opinions into this wide-ranging compendium of pragmatic guidance and usable wisdom. Her advice is always infused with sensitivity, warmth, and humor. It is embedded in candid stories from her own and others’ journeys, and their sometimes imperfect interactions with well-meaning friends. How to Be a Friend to a Friend Who’s Sick is an invaluable guidebook for anyone hoping to rise to the challenges of this most important and demanding passage of friendship.

"I wish Letty’s wonderful book had been available thirteen years ago when I had cancer. I would have given it to all of my friends and begged them to read it. (Fortunately, with a stem cell transplant, I’m as fit as a fiddle today.)”—Gene Wilder, actor and author

“A lively, breezy, important book about conversations that are often difficult, but need not be. How I wish I’d read this before some of my own cringe worthy mistakes. Remember how your mom told you to just be yourself? Letty Pogrebin helps you be your best self, even in the most uncomfortable situations. You will thank her for giving you the courage to be a true friend. “—Judy Blume

“How to be a Friend to a Friend Who’s Sick gives us excellent tools and moving experiences to love and nurture the sick and dying. It urges and enables us to move towards those in need rather than fleeing in terror or despair. It is a handbook of kindness and care and will help patients and healers, which is ultimately all of us.”—Eve Ensler, playwright and activist

"After examining a potentially difficult and nearly universal experience---dealing with a friend's illness -- from many points of view, Letty Pogrebin has turned her findings into wise and witty lessons about a prized but neglected human trait: empathy. In advising us on what to do and say, she also shows why she’s the kind of friend we all would want to have if we were sick."—Harold Varmus, Nobel Laureate in Medicine