Gift for friend diagnosed with breast cancer?

[catchingzeds]

My lovely friend starts chemo next week and I'm trying to find a gift I can send to her to let her know I'm thinking of her.
Budget of around £50 and would appreciate your ideas, feel so helpless.

What about a book or a voucher for wh smith my auntie has recently completed treatment and is is a long process hoursat a time sometimes and she founf reading pased on he time.
x

DVDs or maybe talking books for when she is poorly or tired.

I would ring her and ask her what she wants as a present for her, just for being her. She will say nothing but persist and you'll work something out.

I've had a friend go through this recently and she didn't want special chemo 'stuff'. She just wanted things to be normal, to get through it and have it over.

That said your friend will be very tired and most likely a bit unwell on her treatment weeks so if she has kids maybe the best thing you can give her is to take her kids out, have them over to you and do stuff with them so she can just do whatever she needs to.

The other thing you can do is talk about a treat she would like in a few months time when she's finished the treatment - lunch out - a nice walk - something for you both to look forward to.

Finally - if she's offered the cold cap treatment to preserve her hair encourage her to take it. My friend has had this and it isn't nice but she's kept her hair and that's made a huge difference to her. I didn't know much about this treatment before but now I do, I will know what to recommend to others and if it works that's probably the best gift you could think of.

Thank you all very much

It's so hard to get it right, I speak to her on the phone and texts are sent back and forth but it is still hard to get an idea of anything she may like. She does love to read so that vouchers/books are a great idea.

Thank you Northern Lurker for your insightful post, my friend has 2 young children and she knows I'm on hand, thankfully she has a great family rallying around too. Interesting about the cold cap treatment, I will look into this further. I know she is terrified of losing her hair

That's interesting - my friend had short hair already so that wasn't an issue.

What about some lovely soft glamourous pyjamas/loungewear for her to wear whilst having the treatment or afterwards when shes recouperating?

Does she have an ipod? If so, Itunes vouchers so she can get podcasts and music for while she is receiving the chemo may be good.

Not a present but look into booking her onto look good feel better

I think that sounds wonderful Seb, maybe as a suggestion to friend though, rather than book onto it? The only reason I say that is that (given experience of this) being booked onto the course may make her feel like she has to 'maintain' her looks? Rather than 'dealing' with it all? Sorry, does that make sense?

Don't mean to shoot you down - apologies if it seems that way!

Brilliant ideas, thank you very much- will let you know how I get on.