Coping With Cancer:
My Conversation With My Son

Personally coping with cancer is a difficult situation for anyone. However, an added challenge many people faced with cancer is, "how will their family and loved ones also cope with the news about their cancer?" How will each family member deal with the disclosure in their own way?

While coping with cancer, there are many practical day to day issues as well as emotional issues that have to be dealt with.

Telling Your Children

On the emotional front, one of the most challenging issues is, children and cancer, "How, and how much, do you tell your children?"

There is often a tendency to delay telling children while we figure out "how to tell them", as well as "how much" do we tell them.

Sometimes we as adults, tend to forget that children can often quickly sense when something is wrong.

Sooner or later this issue of, "how the family is coping with cancer", will have to be dealt with. Below is a conversation I had with my youngest son...

"Mom, if you have cancer, what does it mean?" My eight-year-old boy was looking at me intently.

Being the youngest of my four, my main mission in recent years had been to preserve his innocence, despite the influence of his older siblings. It was time to give up my quest.

"Well," I thought carefully. Just days earlier, I had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and the first thing I did was tell my entire entourage, including my youngest child. I was somewhat prepared for his questions. "It means that I'm going to be sick for a while, and sometimes I'll be sicker, and sometimes I'll be okay, and then in the end I'll be better." Wow. How clever.

"When is your hair going to fall out?" he asked next. I settled in on the sofa next to him. This was going to be a long conversation.

"Next week," I replied, matter-of-factly. "Oh," he said. Will you look like you?"

"Of COURSE I’ll look like me. Only better. I might even let you draw on my head."

His eyes widened. "Really? That’s so cool!"

He was silent as he pondered his next question.

"Can you still drive?"

"Um, ya," I answered, then added "only maybe just not as fast, and maybe not every day. I might have days when I can’t drive. But people can still drive me."

He seemed satisfied with my answer.

"How about shopping? Can you go shopping?" For a little kid, he knew me well, not to mention the fact that Christmas wasn’t far off.

"Of COURSE I can go shopping. And if I can't go to the store, I can go shopping online on my computer. Shopping is something I can definitely do."

"So nothing will really change then?" came next.

"I don’t think so. I’ll probably be able to hang out with you more. We can watch movies and stuff. If you're nice to me I might even let you eat ice cream in my bed."

He smiled. We didn’t have many rules, but this was definitely one of the few.

He seemed relieved.

"So you think you can still do a lot of stuff if you have cancer?" He was absently rubbing the top of my head with his hand, as if to see if he might get it to fall out early.

"Yes, my darling boy, there are TONS of things I can do with cancer. Just you watch."

Today there is lots of help and advice on "coping with cancer". Yet with all this help and advice it will always, always be a very personal issue.

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