This week is Book Week (kind of a going-back-to-school theme?) here at How to Cope with Pain, with 3 books related to pain reviewed for you.  Enjoy, and let me know what you think when you read 1 or all!

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Someone we know breaks an arm, and can’t shop or clean his house.  Or a friend has a baby and needs help with just about everything.  We might cook a casserole, or drop by to say hi.  And this is helpful - I know after we had our daughter, any help was so appreciated.

But how about for those of us, or those we know, with chronic conditions?  Everything doesn’t return to normal as easily as a broken arm heals, or the baby reaches that 8-week I-can-finally-shower-again mark.  How can we help in these situations?

Here’s a wonderful answer:  Beyond Casseroles:  505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend.  This little book, written by Lisa Copen, is full of simple, easy, yet important suggestions for supporting someone whose illness or condition doesn’t quickly go away.

Some of the categories of suggestions from the book include:

Specific help for a friend:
 - Offer to shop or clean for him
 - Offer to babysit while she goes to a doctor’s appointment

Offer support:
 - Send notes not once, but regularly
 - Send humorous articles or cartoons to lift her spirits

What not to do:
 - Don’t tell him if his faith was stronger, he’d get better
 - Don’t look up all of the side effects of her medications, and then warn her about them.

Lisa herself has fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, so knows what life with chronic illness is like.  She started Rest Ministries, a Christian organization which serves people who live with chronic illness or pain.  Their website offers a newsletter, articles about illness, and support groups, and you can subscribe to their magazine, or buy t-shirts or pins.

Lisa also started National Invisible Chronic Illness Week, which happens to fall this week for 2007.

I think Beyond Caseroles would be interesting and helpful to you if you have a chronic illness, so you can give suggestions for ways others can help you.  If someone you know or love is ill, this book would give you many creative ways to help them.  The book would be a great reference for support groups, care committees of religious organizations, hospitals or doctor’s offices, hospices, and nursing homes.

The book does have a Christian theme, and some of the suggestions involve religious activity such as praying.  But most aren’t religiously-based, so if one suggestion isn’t for you, just move on to one of the other 504!

Check out Lisa’s website.  You can also read an excerpt from the book there.  Thanks, Lisa, for writing such a wonderful book.  It’s a gem!

The other books reviewed in this week’s series:  Painful Yarns and Explain Pain.

Thanks to BlueEyes5 for the casserole photo.

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