How nice of you to be here and so supportive! You will find lots of different ideas here - one that comes to mind is that sometimes the patient/survivor hesitates to ask for specific things that they would like to have or have done and what you can do is try to see where the needs are and offer them several choices to pick from. Or you can make a list of things that you would be available for and let them choose. When my son was in Tx, lots of friends would ask what they could do and he always hesitated because he didn't want to burden them, but when he finally did ask, he found that they were only too eager to help.