Dear Prudence,
I need advice on how to deal with a 71-year-old friend with rectal cancer. She has been receiving chemotherapy treatments for nearly eight months and hopes to have surgery in January. If the doctors decide not to operate, she will have less than a year to live. She lives 30 miles away, so we check in a few times a week over the phone. Sadly, with the treatments comes the “chemo brain” issue. She will get upset over some part of her treatment, or a perceived slight by other friends, and will start screaming at me during our call. Later she will deny the call occurred, only to suddenly remember whatever incident made her upset and begin screaming at me again. When I ask her to stop and remind her we’ve already had this conversation, she says, “My brain is on chemo, and I remember none of this” and continues to rage. I try to be patient but recently learned from mutual friends that she never rages at them, ever. They do not call her; rather, they wait for her to call them, which is rare. My question is: Why does she only rage at me? How do I get her to stop?