Welcome

Your Child Has Cancer…..Now What?

We all have very strong emotions at the time of our child’s diagnosis (to say the very least). Each one of us deals with the news in our own unique way, but there are similarities in the emotions shared by every parent or caregiver who has received that same terrible news. From time to time you may think you are going crazy, but if you can find someone who has shared your emotions it can validate your feelings and give you a sense of peace.
You are not alone.

“At the time of Gabe’s diagnosis I felt like I had somehow fallen short as a parent, I had been given a beautiful gift and had not taken good care of it. How could I have let him down so badly, what kind of a parent was I? My impulse was to run away and hide with him, although I knew it would solve nothing, I just wanted to hide him away”.- Lu

Not every parent shares those feelings, but some do!
We all need to process the information differently and comfort ourselves in our own ways. Here are some ideas that worked for these parents:
“It might sound crazy, but I started a journal for Alex from the night she was diagnosed. I wrote a letter to her and I think that was what kept me going. I’ve got pictures in it from when she was in hospital. Me and Alex still go through the journal and talk about it. It still makes me cry and breaks my heart to see what she went through”.
- Rachel

“It’s 10 pm you and/or your child just have to have a scoop of REALLY good ice cream or Mochachillo. I know it helped me deal with the stresses of things up there.”
- Kim

There is no magic formula to help you get through your child’s illness, we all muddle through the best way we know how. It is an ongoing process of trying to find a way to understand and organize your thoughts, block out the negative without exposing yourself to more pain. In some ways most of us became emotional zombies rather than allow ourselves to really feel the gravity of the situation, as Rachel and Kim explained:
“I got to the point where I could not stand to talk to certain people about what was happening because they would get so sorrowful about what was happening and I am one that chooses not to dwell on the bad things. I like to focus on the good and there was always some good to be found, when going through cancer stuff it is just not always easy to find.”
- Kim

“It used to break Paul’s heart to go home. We were a family and yet it felt like cancer was keeping us apart. As a mother you are a protector and I felt like I walked around with a brave face on.”
- Rachel

We hope that you can use some of the information in this blog to help you understand that you are not alone in your feelings and to help you avoid some of the pitfalls we have experienced as a group. If we can help some of you to feel a little more prepared to face the task in hand we will have achieved our goal.

We are looking for new bloggers:
We welcome you comments and questions about the information included in our blog and encourage you to submit your own topic ideas and experiences.

Contributors: Rachel , Kim.
Blogger: Lu