Telling the Kiddos

If you're a mom, the first major hurdle you face after a breast cancer diagnosis is figuring out how to share that information with your kids.  There's a big catch.  Namely, you're not allowed to freak them out even though you yourself are VERY freaked out.  Whether or not to tell the kids, when to tell them, and how much to tell them, depends upon many factors, but for me it was clear that I would have to be up front with them.  I am simply terrible at keeping secrets.  In the week after diagnosis, my older son had already caught me crying a few times and he didn't believe me for one little second when I told him it was nothing.  "You're lying," he pronounced knowingly.

One beautiful fall day last October, while my youngest played Biddy Basketball and his older brother looked on, I found myself taking refuge in a family dressing room at our local Boys' and Girls' Club.  I simply couldn't find anyplace else where I could phone my sister out of earshot of the kids.  So I locked myself in and bawled like a baby while people (who legitimately needed to use the room, no doubt) banged on the door in vain.  I clung stubbornly to the key that dangled from a dirty and tattered old Elmo keychain and sobbed, "Go awaaaaaaaaaay!"  Clearly, something had to give.  Or I would still be in that dressing room today.  I swear.

The next evening I told my husband that it was now or never.  Bedtime probably wasn't the best time for what we were planning ("Mom has cancer, now hurry up and go to sleep!"), but I knew that I might never feel as up to the task again. We rushed the kids to the living room for what we called a "family meeting."  The kind we had done, exactly once, four years beforehand, before forgetting that we were supposed to do them on a regular basis. Oops! The kids were out of practice, to say the least.  This meant that they were also intensely curious. After all, their parents had been acting mighty odd lately.

"You know how I've been at the doctor's a lot this week?" I began.  "Well, that's because the doctors have been testing me and they found something," I said.  My oldest, who was ten and is on the anxious side, looked at me and asked point-blank: "Is it cancer?"  As strange as this sounds, he had been asking questions about cancer for quite some time.  He's a hypochondriac by nature and several of his acquaintances had lost relatives to the disease in recent years.  In fact, cancer was right up there with Ebola on his list of favorite things to worry about.  Despite all of our reassurances, and discussions about probabilities, he felt that one of these two conditions might befall him at any moment.  I doubt he ever suspected that anything could happen to his parents, though.  Kids never do.

"Yes, it's cancer," I replied.

I let the words sink in a bit before rushing in to do damage control.

"Butit'sbreastcancerandthat'soneofthebestformsofcancertohave," I said, tripping over my words.  "They have lots of good drugs for it," I continued, "and my doctors are going to be giving me some of the most powerful drugs out there."  At this point I was merely repeating what my doctors had said and hoping that they had told me the truth.  Unfortunately, at the same time my seven year old was deciding that this "family meeting" was officially a D-R-A-G.  So he began whining: "COME ON!! CAN WE PLAY POKEMON MONOPOLY NOW?"  When asked if he understood what we were talking about he replied, "Yeah, mom has cancer, blah, blah, blah!  Now can we PLAY??!!"  Ha!  The 'C word' hadn't made much of an impression upon his seven year old mind.

We explained how lucky I was to have access to powerful drugs and to live in a city with world-class hospitals and doctors.  We explained how the kids didn't have to worry about "catching" cancer from me.  (Yes, my oldest did ask).  All of this annoyed my seven year old even more, who continued to moan about his Pokemon game.

"Are you going to lose your hair?" my eldest asked nervously.  "Yes," I replied matter-of-factly.  I could tell from the slump of his shoulders that this was hard for him to accept.  Was he upset because he knew that I'd just spent three years growing my hair out?  Not on your life.  More likely, he was afraid that I'd prance around bald in front of his friends.  As if I didn't embarrass him enough ALREADY!  I mean, I am a mom who sings when I walk down the street with him.  OLD songs.  In front of OTHER people.

I'll never know for sure why the hair thing hit him so hard because at the very mention of baldness my younger son stepped in.  I mean, someone had to spruce up our boring old family meeting, right??  He raced to the dress up bin to retrieve the pink wig I'd worn as a Clash of Clans archer for Halloween the year before and he plopped it on top of my head.  Then he plopped it on his own head.  Then he danced around with it and gave us all a fabulous show.  After I assured my older son that I would be getting a regular wig, in a regular color, and after indulging my youngest in a game of Pokemon monopoly, my husband and I put the boys to bed.

The relief I felt at having told the kids was tinged with equal parts sadness and self-pity.  ("Why do I have to deal with this sh!#% when other people my age don't?" I thought.  Of course, I was being naive.)  Yet most of all I was proud of how my husband and I had handled this parenting moment.  We kept the TV turned up so the kids wouldn't hear us high-fiving each other afterwards.  The fact that the boys were quiet seemed like a good sign.  At least they weren't so freaked out that they couldn't get to sleep.  Then, about an hour later, my older son surprised me: "Mom, can you come here for a minute?" Sh*&t!  He hadn't been able to sleep after all.  "Maybe it was just the TV?" I thought as I made my way to his room nervously.  "What is it?" I asked as I sat on the edge of his bed stroking his cheek.  For once he didn't brush my hand away.

"Mom, do those drugs you mentioned always work?"  Gulp. He'd hit upon the million-dollar question and I was completely unprepared for it.  The truth is that I just didn't know.  Each doctor I consulted cited slightly different numbers when talking about the probability of achieving a complete response to the targeted therapy (i.e. obliterating the cancer).  Anyway, those numbers wouldn't help me here.  I had to think on my feet.  "I'm going to be getting some of the best drugs in the world and my doctors expect them to work," I said with all of the confidence I could muster.  "They're going to watch me closely and they'll switch my drugs if they have to," I continued.  Then I promised him that his dad and I would be sure to tell him how things were going so that he would never have to wonder if we were hiding things from him.  The social worker had told me that it was important not to leave kids wondering on that score.  Once he seemed satisfied, I kissed him on the forehead and slipped out of the room.  He never asked me for any kind of reassurance ever again.

If you want to know how my story played out, it's all there in my first blog entry.  Otherwise, here is a photo of my youngest son wearing the pink wig that helped us through that difficult family meeting last fall.  (This photo was taken at the Boys and Girls Club one year before the conversation in question.)  Although we no longer own the wig, this photo still brings me joy.  The kind of joy that only a pink wig can bring. :-)  I sure wish that I had kept it.