About supporting friend with cancer?

[Scarby9]

I suppose this is more a WWYD or a 'talk me through my dilemma' than a true AIBU, but here goes.

After a few weeks of investigation my best friend was 99.9% diagnosed with Ovarian cancer this week. She has been told it could be up to 7 weeks before she can have the tumour removed.

She lives alone, is a key worker and will continue working for now but isolate for 14 days before her op. All her able family members and close friends are also face to face key workers - nurses, doctors, midwives and teachers.

I am also a keyworker but working 100% from home and isolated. I am not shopping in person or anything so that I can support my parents wo I am in a support bubble with (84 and 85, Dad shielding and sole carer for mum with dementia, both had Pfizer vaccine early January). They will only see me when they are 10 days isolated between medical appointments.

My friend is devastated by the diagnosis and really struggling on her own. We are all face timing and supporting at a distance but don't want to risk adding to her potential Covid risk, or doing anything that could jeopardize what already seems a very long wait.

I am obviously the best person to go to support her, and I really want to. But at the moment while she is still working and having hospital visits etc she is a Covid risk to me and I would have to stop seeing my parents.

Please talk me through this. I'm so torn.

Anybody? Please?

Go. Do not even think about it. She needs you

Thank you for replying.
I know she needs me, but so do my parents. And they can't risk Covid.
I am face-timing my friend in 5 mins for coffee.

Can you go but social distance? I'm sure even seeing you would help her.

I'd distance from my parents and go and support your friend. You can still take them shopping, just leave it at the door like you presumably did before "bubbles" were invented.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, my fiend went on a long stompy walk with me where I could bitch and moan about how unfair it was.

Is meeting outdoors a possibility for you both?

friend although she is a bit of a fiend

When i had cancer I just really needed someone to listen to me - not someone to try to cheer me up or distract me - someone who would acknowledge how scared I was.

I think your friends needs you more than your parents at the moment. They have each other for company and you can still shop for them, run errands, etc

Thank you all.

My parents are 100 miles away so my bubble support in winter has been visiting them for the weekend to take the pressure off my dad and provide distraction from my mum.

I am going to visit my friend this afternoon and try being on a chair near an open window while she is the other end of the room. We have just had an hour and a half on face time.

PS. It is really perishingly cold here today. Just complicates things further!

Sorry, distraction FOR my mum, not from.

My mum is at the end stage of ovarian cancer. If she has read anything online about it she will be feeling really really scared at the moment. Not to say that it can’t be recovered from, but it’s not got a brilliant recovery rate as it tends to be detected at a later stage. Please be there for her. I’m sure your parents would understand.

@Penn2021That is heartbreaking to hear. I am sorry for you and your family.

I have been deliberately not googling because I had a memory of ovarian cancer not having a good survival rate and I am not ready to face that. I think we are all in shock, actually, not just the friend who has been diagnosed.

She had had noticeable symptoms for a good three months before going to the doctor - protruding abdomen, having to go to the toilet frequently and urgently and being very tired. But she - and we - put it down to the stress of her job, age and lockdown and we even joked about it. It literally never crossed our minds that it could be anything. So I fear it has been found late.