|
|
| How Do You Explain Cancer to Kids? |
|
|
|
I recently found my answers in “Honey, Mommy has cancer,” on CNN.com. In case you missed the article, the three key points are:
For instance, if you’re a mother, how do you explain to your young daughter that you’re going to cut off all your hair before something called “chemotherapy” took it? The CNN article highlighted a 42-year-old woman in Phoenix whose 4-year-old daughter learned about cancer by helping cut her mother’s hair. The American Cancer Society’s Web site contains advice on how to tell your kids, based on their ages. The group Kimmie Cares provides dolls with removable hair and bandannas, similar to ones worn by cancer patients to cover their pates turned bald by chemo. Gilda’s Club—the organization formed to honor comedienne Gilda Radner, who died in the early 1980s from ovarian cancer— and Children’s Treehouse Foundation also were cited by CNN as information resources. I know what it means to be a kid and told a parent has cancer. An epiphany on Broadway The doctors lowered the boom on me in the mid-1960s: my mother had early-stage uterine cancer. I was probably in the sixth or seventh grade. On that steamy summer day, my father and I were driving home from the hospital in his 1963 Mercury with the roll-down back window. My mother remained back at the hospital for her first radiation treatments. The news had stunned us into an uncomfortable silence, which I broke by turning on the radio. I don’t know what caused me to reach hastily for the dial out of the blue. The very first words I heard out of the radio came from the Southern sultriness of country singer Dottie West: “Millions and millions of people have been cured of cancer.” I had turned on the radio at the exact beginning of an advertisement from the American Cancer Society. At the corner of 5th and Broadway, I knew I had experienced an epiphany. Are chills running up your spine right now? They are running up mine right now, 45 years later as I sit in a Border’s book store and coffee shop writing this. The words come back In my childhood faith, I knew at that moment my mother would survive. However, I wondered why I didn’t turn on the radio during “Wooly Bully,” a used-car commercial, or a DJ’s asinine banter—not at the exact time to hear, “Millions and millions of people have been cured of cancer.” Don’t talk to me about chances or probability. Some things in life you can’t explain, but then there are “God things.” (There, I’ve said it! Atheists, don’t send me e-mails, okay?) Advance far into the future, in a darkened hospital room in Dallas. Other patients were sleeping soundly and visitors had gone home hours ago. It is 3 in the morning. The little boy who had switched on the radio back when LBJ was President was now an adult, having forgotten long ago about the advertisement and his spiritual conundrum. His mother had indeed survived uterine cancer, and Dottie West had advanced to that Grand Ole Opry in the sky. He wondered whether he would survive prostate cancer, the same disease that killed his grandfather. His answer would come in six hours, when doctors would fillet him open. But in the stillness of that room, the man’s mind resurrected forgotten words from 45 years ago—in Dottie West’s voice: “Millions and millions of people have been cured of cancer.” That man thinks he’ll have another cup of coffee right now.
Write Comment
Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Five years ago, how would I have explained the fact I had prostate cancer to my kids, assuming I had any then? What would they had thought if they had known the big guy who took them to see the Dallas Cowboys and taught them to “pull his finger” could possibly die?
|
|
| Other Topics: | Editorial & Columns | Newsletter Archives | About Nubella | Contact Us | Partnership & Advertising | MTS Corporate Info |
| Network Partners: |
|
|