The Art of Giving Advice

I have a few blog posts primed for release. This one has been simmering since the last post about obligation. Some of the post may be dated, but I think it’s still appropriate. This blog may not tell the art of giving advice, but does include some thoughts I have, with love, even if I don’t speak as eloquently as I’d like.

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Wow! So, if you’ve read the last couple blog posts you know that I feel passionately about the O word, obligation.

You might have also picked up some negative vibes about advice. I admit that I put the vibes out there in a pretty pronounced way. Let’s have some background and information to help you understand my perspective.

I’d like to take the opportunity to again emphasize that I’m not being critical of anything that anybody did during Karen’s battle. We had loving friends and family, and we always felt supported. If you’re reading this and think it’s about you, please don’t concern yourself about it. I learned lessons during, but also after Karen’s passing through shared experiences. I attended group therapy and heard tales from many people who went through similar battles. But even if you think you might have done these things, you remember it better than I do. I choose to remember people for the best that they did for us. We were fortunate to have the support we needed, when we needed it, and privacy (which is another type of support in itself) when we needed that.

This isn’t about anybody that knew us closely enough to know about this blog. Even if it were, I’ve been the person who has given unsolicited advice many, many, many times in my past. I’ve been the person who did the wrong thing more times than I care to remember. Fortunately, as I grow older, I remember fewer of them. And the older I get, the faster they go.

On a normal day, unsolicited advice is part of life. But it can be given and received in a number of ways, and I’d like to speak about a few of them.

I’d like to note that I spoke previously about circles, particularly a person’s “inner circle,” and to remind readers that the inner circle is usually the people you live with, parents, siblings, close friends, and other family. This circle generally gets a free pass to say whatever they want, and nothing I write here likely applies. These people have been giving and getting advice for years, and have built up a bit of credibility (or established a lack thereof) and it might be more shocking if it stopped!

Although this topic isn’t just about Karen and me, I can only really tell my own tales, so I’d like to speak a little about our perspective, admitting that it’s not the only one.

Karen and I regularly looked toward others for advice. We sought people who could help us make informed decisions, whether it related to personal or business issues. We knew we had strengths and weaknesses and cherished the advice we received from many people. I am very fortunate that I have people I can look to for advice.

When Karen became ill we started getting advice from the normal places we’d expect, but also from people we just met. People would tell us that “you should” do this and that. Some of them were off the wall, and others were completely anecdotal to their personal experiences. We heard “you should” over and over, and even when it came from a place of love, it became a drain.

We didn’t keep Karen’s illness secret, so most of the people we encountered knew, or found out through conversation. Heck, we had banners up at the office from various events held in Karen’s honor (one of our banks). This very often led to unsolicited advice. In a typical day we might get told that “you should check out the cancer centers in Cuba,” and “you should look at the benefits of CBD,” and “you should talk to my friend Cindy who went through the exact same thing,” and “you should go to the James Cancer hospital,” and “you shouldn’t take chemo because…,” and “you should take lots of vitamin B-12,” and “you should be at home resting,” and more, and more, and more, and more, infinity.

The above is a strong argument to not tell anybody you’re sick in the first place, but Karen was and is an inspiration to so many people, she didn’t want to hide her optimism and her battle from the world, though she didn’t share the other aspects. Those are the ones that I can’t share, even now.

With strangers it’s easy to pretend to be grateful for the advice, and then dismiss it from your mind. With others, this becomes an obligation. People would ask us whether we looked into their suggestion. We had to take time to investigate every bit of advice, when what we really wanted to do was seek our own options, including asking some of our friends and family for advice.

Imagine waking up, showering, eating breakfast, throwing it back up, struggling to move around and manage the day, and when you speak with people they immediately ask if you took their advice and made an appointment with the James, or took more B-12, or whatever. That’s not the type of conversation that she wanted, but it was too often the one that was available, if she chose to answer the phone at all. It wasn’t very far into Karen’s battle until she decided to stop taking calls, and asked me to help her.

As you know, my sister is battling cancer right now. In the distant past my sister and I weren’t close, but we’ve had a really good relationship over the last five or so years. We’ve spoken much more often since she was diagnosed. She’s asked me my thoughts about a couple of things, and I’ve done my best to take my own lessons to heart. We had one great conversation where I asked her about all the advice she was getting and asked her how she was feeling about that. She let me know that she had been getting inundated with advice and was getting frustrated trying to look into each thing, just like Karen and I were.

Now that I’ve told you that you should never give advice, I’ll tell you how to give advice. I’ve mentioned it in another post, but it is okay to give advice if you are willing to do the work yourself.

First, never give advice for anything that you haven’t explored thoroughly. Don’t ever say things like: “I heard that they are doing great things in Mexico, you should look into that.” No, you should look into that, and if you are willing to bet your friend’s life on advising it, then, and only then, should you advise your friend to look into it, providing them information about all the research you did, and any reservations you have.

Never say “My aunt went to the James Cancer Hospital, and they saved her life, so you should go there.” Your aunt might have had one of dozens of types of cancer, and had one or more out of hundreds (and thousands of combinations) of genetic markers that made a specific cancer treatment effective. Hospitals run a variety of tests to determine the efficacy of various treatments. These tests include: Targeted Mutation Testing, Comprehensive Genomic Profiling, HER2 Testing, BRCA Testing (very common test for gynecological cancers), Microsatellite Instability, Liquid Biopsy, and probably others. If you speak to your aunt, find out what cancer it was, what tests they ran, what indications they found that guided the course of treatment, and IF you determine that they are the same as your friend, then you can bring your aunt up. Otherwise, your aunt’s battle is just anecdotal, and does not suggest the same treatment would help your friend. If it’s the same type of cancer, the same stage of cancer, the same genetic markers (after genetic testing), then that’s the time to share otherwise anecdotal advice.

Make no mistake, doing the research yourself is no easy task. Try it, and then imagine your friend having to do so for three different friends who all want to help. How about thirty?

If you hear of a possible “cure,” please also understand what the term “In Vitro” means, and does not mean.

“In Vitro” basically means outside of the body. A treatment for cancer tested to work “In Vitro” does not necessarily mean anything at all. It means that when I add this thing or do this thing to a cancer cell in a petri dish, it kills the cancer cells. Sounds great on paper (or the Internet), but the same test can be used with gasoline and a match. There are lots of “cures” that claim efficacy after In Vitro testing. Gasoline and a match are 100% effective against ovarian cancer when tested In Vitro.

Chemo drugs go through In Vitro and In Vivo (inside the body, on a live patient) testing, clinical trials, and are clinically reviewed. I know that some people claim things like “the medical companies don’t want you to know that CBD (marihuana) treatment works against cancer,” because they can’t make money on it, but that’s prompted by incorrect assumptions. Medical companies make tons of money on medications created from natural sources. Karen was on a medication made from medical grade Omega-3s (fish oil) for quite some time. Millions of people in this country are dependent upon pain medications made from cocaine and opium, which are grown in fields just like marihuana.

I varied away from the point I was trying to make, which is that we had people close to us tell us to look at things. One example that came up regularly was CBD (and we considered it). It may be great, but it’s only been shown to be effective in non-clinical trials (no oversight). CBD has been shown to be more effective against cancer cells during In Vitro testing than the efficacy of clinical use of Carboplatin and Taxol In Vivo. Again, just to be clear, Carboplatin and Taxol may be 60-80% for ovarian cancer In Vivo. I don’t know what the efficacy of CBD is In Vivo, because there are no clinical trials, but even is it is 100%, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Nothing at all. Gasoline and a match are 100% effective. I don’t like the FDA, I think the FDA does lots of lousy stuff, but it does at least provide a framework where we can compare apples to apples. Point is, don’t advise your friend to do things when there isn’t reliable information. If you don’t understand the terminology, if you don’t know what every one of the terms and acronyms mean, then you can’t honestly affirm that it’s the best thing for your friend.

If you don’t have the time to research, what can you say?

“I’m here to support you. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help. BTW, I had an aunt that went to the James for ovarian cancer, if you want, I’d be glad to talk to her and see if she has anything to share that might be helpful. Otherwise, I hope we can get together for lunch when you’re feeling up to it. I’d be glad to spring for that new super place we were talking about…”

No questions, no advice (unless it’s well founded), and no implied obligations.