dealing with a friend's cancer recurrence

Dear Ladies, 

I'm hoping you can help. I have a friend who was Dx'd with melanoma in the fall 2010. She had surgery, it was stage 1, excellent prognosis, very low risk of recurrence. Everything seemed good. I got my BC Dx and Tx in Jan-June 2011; had my mammogram this Jan and all is good. Then my friend recently had a recurrence of her melanoma and it's now stage 3. I want to be there for her but I feel like I still don't know what to do to help. I visited and bought her dinner, books, etc. I knew enough to avoid the stupid talk (we joked about the well meaning but ill-informed advice we'd heard). I said I'd come back again in a few weeks (she has a large network of support; we are friends but not the best of friends). But somehow I thought I'd be the cancer friend who magically know what to say or do. Obviously, some of this is hitting some of my own fears (she was stage 1 and had a recurrence; I was stage 1 so...) but I'm dealing with that away from her.  Does anyone have any advice? I feel like I'm as stupid as I ever was. My DH says that the most important thing is to be there for her; some people run away in the face of cancer, so don't do that.  I don't know. If any of you have any advice on how I can help her, please let me know. I thought I'd be able to do more but maybe we're all beginners each time this happens anew.