She brought it up, but I'm not sure if asking more is the right thing. That's the tricky thing about communication. If I said something like that to a friend, I would hope they would ask me to talk more about it. If they didn't ask, I would be hurt and think they didn't care. I'm not sure if she's the same way, though. And especially when you're texting. You can't pick up on the tone as well as when you're speaking to each other. Then she made that comment about turning into a sympathy *****. Does she want sympathy? Or would that overwhelm her?

I disagree that my wanting to know more is about me. I really just want to offer her what she needs. I'm just not sure what that is.

I had a friend once whose little girl died of cancer at 6. One day I was complaining to him about my son who was a teen at the time. Suddenly it occurred to me that he'd just lost his daughter and might not want to hear me complain about my son - who after all was very much alive. So I stopped mid-rant and apologized. He got really angry and told me that he didn't want to be treated differently because his daughter had died.

So, back to Sherry, I've been texting her a lot about my problems with my mentally ill son. Now that I know that she's very ill, I feel like I should stop doing that. But then I don't want to start treating her differently because she's sick. Maybe she just needs to be treated the same as always? But it seems freaky to me to continue just acting like nothing's different when she's told me she breathes through a straw.

I see why people "disappear" when they find out their friends are sick. I feel totally inadequate. I strongly believe that what I would want in this same situation is not what Sherry would want. If I told someone I was breathing through a straw because my lungs aren't good, and all they said was 'sorry you're suffering,' I'd ... I don't know. I think it would hurt me to my core. That would be my opening for them to ask questions. I wouldn't have said it if I didn't want questions. And if they simply returned to our regular conversation as if I'd said nothing more earth-shattering than, "I have a hang nail," I would think they were cold and insensitive. But my prior history with Sherry around this very issue makes me hesitate to offer more than the most perfunctory sympathy.