Ideally, when you have a serious illness, family should rally around you and offer unconditional support. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes illness can bring out the worst in people, and I’m not even talking about the person who is actually sick.
Tensions can run high when you are facing a serious or possibly life threatening illness. All of a sudden, a sense of control has been removed, both from the person affected by the illness and the family and friends around the person. This affects people in different ways. In my family, it seems that we all want to get that control back and will fight like cats and dogs for it.
This need for control can manifest itself in some very destructive ways.
For example, in the case of cancer, everyone may be looking for answers as to why it happened in the first place. Some pretty bizarre stuff might happen. A mother-in-law may accuse her daughter-in-law of causing her son’s cancer through some environmental factor. A son might accuse his father of passing along bad genes. Family may blame the person suffering from cancer herself of not being careful enough to avoid it.
Then there is treatment. Everyone wants a hand in and a say on what treatment should occur. Some family members may insist on nothing but the most extreme or thorough measures, while others may fight for being more conservative with treatment. Rarely does everyone in the family agree. Relinquishing all of that control to the person who needs to make the decisions, the person directly affected and perhaps his or her spouse, is proper, but not easy, for many family members to do.
While this behavior may not affect all families or even most families, know that it can happen and be prepared for it.
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