Sooner or later, everyone encounters illness, but most of us meet it unprepared. How should we behave with the ill? A physician reflects on the frontier between illness and health

‘… (and this is hard I know)
try not to ignore the ill, or to scurry
past, muttering about a bus, the bank.’
Julia Darling

Illness is the lived experience of ­disease. It is deeply personal; no two individuals with the same physical ­symptoms will experience illness in the same way. Many feel they lack the language to help others cope with illness. Even ­professional carers may struggle to find words that are both true and kind. But a consensus is emerging from the stories of those with serious illness on what to do, what to say, and what not to say, around them – whether you are a carer, a friend or a loved one.

Most important, do not ignore the ill, or indulge in self-serving contrivances to stay away because of a sense of awkwardness. This only adds to the isolation of illness. Words are not essential. Sometimes, “I don’t know what to say” is the honest thing to say. The philosopher Havi Carel, who has a serious progressive lung disease, writes: “What I have learned from my illness is that in times of hardship, grief and loss, there is no need for original illuminating phrases” (Illness: The Cry of the Flesh). Likewise, in a good-humoured account of his illness with oesophageal cancer, Christopher Hitchens called for “ground rules” for sympathisers and sufferers of cancer to address the “inevitable awkwardness in diplomatic relations between Tumourtown and its neighbours” (Mortality).