How do you talk to someone living with a disease?

Do you have a friend, or maybe a relative or family member living with a disease or illness? Have you ever found yourself grasping for the right words when discussing the topic of mortality? Today, I’m here to talk to you about how to talk to them. Actually, the answer might be more simple than you might think… so here it is: you talk to them just like you talk to anyone else ya dinkus!!!

Human beings are fascinating creatures. We use categories to help us catalogue our memories from the past and also to help us dictate our decisions in the future. Subconsciously we group people by gender, race, religion, hair colour, etc. etc. etc. and it happens within microseconds. Naturally we tend to connect to people that we can relate with and for people like me who’ve never dealt with living with an illness, we find it especially hard to relate to people who are confronting their own mortality. But just like gender and race, illness and disease do not purely define an individual, they merely make up a portion of their existence. I have a theory that there is a Disney movie scene for almost every important life lesson to be learned. It’s no different for this message. Check out Shrek talking about Ogres having layers.

I had somewhat of a profound realization while recording episode three a couple weeks ago. We were talking about confronting your own mortality and that’s when it kind of hit me… we’re all dying. I know I know, you’re right, I can’t relate to being diagnosed with a terminal illness and I can’t possibly imagine what it would be like to be told that my life would be drastically cut short. But still, we are all going to die. We’re all suffering from a terminal illness called life. And yes, many are fortunate enough to live long and healthy lives, while others leave this world way too early. But there’s no guarantee. We never really know when our time to go will be, though the inevitable end is always there… well fuck. That got dark real quick. My bad.   

I guess the purpose of sharing this with you guys today is two-fold. One, when someone tells you that they have a disease don’t be weird about it. Yea it sucks, but your sympathy gets old after a while. Make their time left on this planet fucking awesome, don’t just bum them out! And two, be comfortable with your own mortality. Don’t sulk about the fact that you’re eventually going to die, use it to motivate you to be the best version of yourself. The reality is, we never really know when our time will be up.  

Your favourite Sickboy host,

Brian

#sicktalksick