“How Can I Help?”

When a lot of people first hear about a catastrophic medical event, their first inclination is to try and help. Although I was shielded from a lot of this while I was in the hospital, my friends and family and even people I don’t know very well reached out to me and my wife to ask what they could do.

“How can I help?”

It’s a good question. First off, just know that your willingness to do so is an absolute mitzvot, and the gratefulness I have in my heart for you, for your concern, and for your desire to help us still makes me very emotional. I have plans to talk more about this in the future, but I’m still wrapping my head around it all.

Some friends started a Meal Train, which is awesome. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a schedule that allows different people to sign up to provide meals and meal gift cards when cooking is perhaps the last thing on your mind. My family was fed, and fed well, for the entire time I was in the hospital.

There were also donations, and that was amazing. I am not the kind of person to ask for money, but people did so of their own volition, which I am completely awed by. We needed money to modify my house, and get equipment for when I got home, and continuing medical supplements and equipment and whatnot, and you saved us from having to go deeper into debt to get all of that stuff, and I am forever grateful to you for that.

I have a friend who had a daughter with a chronic, life-threatening condition, for which she ended up having long stays in the hospital over the course of her life. She made a suggestion that I thought I’d pass on.

Caregivers and families who are in similar situations as she was, with lingering illness that will continue for months or years, you can (and maybe should) set up a registry on Amazon or some such online service like Target or Walmart.

It’s pretty easy to do at all of those links, and you can make a list of the things that your patient, your family, or even you yourself really need.

In this way, people who really want to help, and who really want to know that they’re making a difference in your life, will be able to know exactly how they can help, and you’ll be able to tell them without having to wrack your brain every time someone asks.

I’m fine. I don’t need anything at the moment. This isn’t for me. It’s for people who really need it.

Share your registry with me, and I’ll tell your story and put it on the blog. Let’s all see how we can help.

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As always, if you have it in you, please give a thought to donating time or money to Hospice Austin. They do amazing work for people who are going through the hardest thing a person can face.

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