I definitely support the suggestions of seeing what she needs done, and then helping her. You could probably recruit 4-5 mutual friends and their spouses to come in and help do a Tornado of Cleaning in her house. Depending on where she is in her disease, she may not have the physical strength or energy to do a lot of cleaning and maintenance around the house anymore. You could watch her kids while your friends work on doing some of the deep cleaning kind of things while she gets out of the house for errands or maybe takes a trip to get a manicure or something. You could put the guys outside mowing the lawn and doing "Honey Do" things around the house. Then when she comes home, she has a sparkling clean house. And she doesn't feel so bad watching people do work she feels she should do.

If she really just insists on not having you help, maybe you and your friends could pitch in and give her a gift certificate to a maid service or carpet cleaning service or lawnmowing service.