This information is intended for you while your friend or family member is still alive. And if they are not religious, you should respect that in their death as well, no matter what you believe. Posts linked here are not written by Teresa or Amanda; they go to external sites. For Caregivers / Family & Friends:
- Don’t Tell Cancer Patients What They Could Be Doing to Cure Themselves
- Everything Doesn’t Happen For a Reason
- Please don’t say, “Just let me know what I can do” (in brief: don’t put the onus on the person who needs the help):
- The Mistake I Made With My Grieving Friend
Religion:
- Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer (If you don’t have a NY Times account, you can read this article (which was free for ages!) here.)
- My Sincere Request For You To Stop Telling Me You’re Praying For Me (And on this note, from Teresa and Amanda, stop telling me you’re not going to tell me you’re praying for me, or that you’re “doing that thing you don’t want to know about,” because then you might as well tell me you’re praying for me. Please respect that religion and prayers create stress for many people. If it makes YOU feel good to pray for us, that is FINE. Go right ahead, we’re not asking you to stop what helps you. Just don’t tell us you’re doing it; don’t tell us you’re doing it but not telling us. It’s not respecting our needs in an already very stressful time.)
- Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials
- Under the header, Worse Outcomes Associated with Prayer: “This study therefore showed that remote intercessory prayer did not improve outcomes after coronary artery bypass graft surgery. In fact, the knowledge of being prayed for was associated with a slightly but significantly higher rate of postsurgical complications.“