Very Sick Friend

[fowers] what a shock. I often think our friends know us better than our family. They know all our secrets, all our fears and hopes. Have seen us at our best and worst. Have shared and helped us cope with our families and our relationships with them. So to loose that is terrible. I hope your friend recovers. It's ok for you to feel bereft though, I would in your shoes.

Dear dorset I really feel for you as today I visited my lovely friend of many, many years who suffers from MS and has for years but now I see her moving away the symptoms are so much worse and my visit could only be for a short time as her speech became slurred and she is apparently "not allowed to cough". But dorset you will be there for your friend and that I know will mean everything.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts and little bouquets , it means a lot and I feel better having put my thoughts down on this forum.

How sad Dorset. I'm sure that you will find new ways of being good friends!

How very sad - but she is alive and getting the care she needs; and you will I am sure be a lynch pin in that care and a part of all the progress she will make. She will be glad to have you by her side.

It is a dreadful shock when these thing happen. 7 years ago my dearest friend rang left a message on my answerphone to say she was in hospital. She was in her early sixties, lively, fit and had just started a successful new business.

A few days later I went north to visit her. I found the ward and was told which bay she was in. There were three women in it sat up and chatting, none of them my friend. Lying huddled up in the fourth bed was a shrunken, wizened old lady. I didn't even recognise my friend until one of the other women confirmed that was her. She had been to see her doctor after feeling slightly under the weather for a few weeks. By the end of the day she was in hospital with a diagnosis of terminal cancer. She died five days later. The memory of the shock of seeing, without warning, my lively active friend reduced to a shrunken shell and so near her end will never, ever leave me.

dorset you still have your friend, she will recover slowly and, while things will change, your friendship will not.

Don't despair just yet dorset cardiac rehab can do wonders it may well be a long haul but with you for a friend she will have motivation. I hope she is a little better at each visit and that you can keep cheerful for her sake.

I'm very sorry to hear about your friend. for you and her.

You're not being selfish dorset, but mourning the loss of the things that you would have done together in the future, not just on a personal level but for her as well. Terribly sad.

How desperately sad for you both Dorset.

I too am visiting a once very fit friend who was struck down with meningitis last month and was in Intensive Care for 5 days. She has been in hospital ever since.

I am visiting her for the first time on Thursday and am worried how she will look and if I will give away on my face how shocked I am. She has already warned me by email she looks dire.

Your friend will need your friendship even more now, as will mine, so perhaps this is when we both step up to the plate and show how much they mean to us.