Noun: family; plural noun: families

 

A group of people related by blood or marriage.

 

 

This is the group of people who of course are going to be most affected by what is happening to you.  They may also be the group of people from whom you draw your strength, who give you the biggest reason to win this battle and who give you the most support.  But they may not be.

 

Having The Cancer is challenge enough in itself, but if you have young children who depend on you, there are a whole host of other issues that you will have to contend with.  As the mum, you may well be the main carer for your kids, even if you work full time, and it’s really hard to not be able to give them as much of yourself as you did before your diagnosis.  You will have all sorts of logistical issues with getting them to and from school.  They will still be prone to childhood illnesses and will still need to visit the dentist and the doctor.  They won’t be able to prepare their own meals and you might find yourself feeling guilty on top of every bloody thing else.  Having young children is itself exhausting, without being ill! 

 

Older children are more independent, but teenagers are inherently self-obsessed.  They can’t help it, they just are. Unless you are a member of the Von Trapp family, it’s unlikely that your teenager will think of running the hoover around to save mum a job, or surprising you by cooking dinner.   There is a good chance that you will still find penicillin growing in cups that have sat for weeks on their bedside table, layers of dirty clothes on their floordrobe and their bedroom bins overflowing to rat-infestation danger point.

 

What you have to remember though, is that while The Cancer does of course affect them, and they will be worried about you, and love you desperately, it isn’t actually happening to them.  If you are there in the morning and there again when they get in from school, they may well have forgotten or not even realized that you have had chemo that day, or an important appointment with your oncologist.   It doesn’t hurt to remind older children every now and then that you are not 100%.  You will always be mum, but you don’t have to be superwoman.   

 

On one occasion I took my then 13 year old daughter with me to a chemo appointment.  I would have taken all 3 of my children, but they boys were both working.  Apart from just keeping me company, I wanted her to come for 2 reasons. 

 

The first was to show her that the actual process of having chemo isn’t that terrible.  If she ever is in the awful position of having to go through it herself, hopefully she won’t dread or fear it like I did before I had experienced it.  But secondly, I wanted to make it a real thing for her.  Not just a word, or something that happens to mum that she doesn’t need to think or care about.  She was also pretty good at getting the coffees in, so it was a win-win all round.

 

Grown up children may become your carer in some cases.  Lifts to and from appointments, help with domestic chores and general moral support.  Sadly this isn’t always the case, but where it is it can be a tremendous comfort.  It can be strange when this role reversal happens, but if it does, welcome it with open arms.  Some people are not as fortunate and don’t have the support of loving family members to travel along the journey with them.

 

If you are still lucky enough to have your parents, it might be very upsetting for them to watch you go through your illness.  There is always a natural order of events, and all things being equal, we will lose our parents before we die.  That is the way it’s supposed to go.  No matter how old our offspring may be, they will always be our child and we don’t want to witness them going through a potentially life threatening illness.  As much as I would have liked my mum’s love and support through my journey, in many ways I was glad she wasn’t there to see it, as I think it may have broken her heart.  Also, she was a right feeder, and would probably have been force feeding me cannelloni and pasta fazool even if I was green with nausea.  And, as pointed out before, her bedside manner was utterly appalling.  May she rest in peace.

 

Telling my children that I had The Cancer was worse than hearing it for myself.  The kids had lost their grandad 5 years prior to cancer, and we had all so recently been through the loss of my middle son’s friend, Jake.  The diagnosis, coming in June, was slap bang in the middle of my eldest son’s A levels and my middle son’s GCSEs (he was already on the back foot as he was grieving for his friend and had broken his right hand in an American football accident, which required surgery, and so he was having to do all of his exams via a scribe).  We managed to delay telling them until after the GCSEs were done, but we felt we had to tell them before chemo started in case I became obviously ill, and at this time Lewis still had one more A level to sit.

 

Where do you start?  There is just no easy way to say it.  They were all old enough to know what it could mean and I didn’t want to insult their intelligence by pretending that it wasn’t a big deal.  It felt like my heart was literally breaking as the tears started to flow.  I would challenge anyone to stay strong and bloody positive at this juncture!  I was quite surprised to find that they wanted to know the details and what was going to happen next.  I think that like me, they then parked it, and got on with it.

 

They have been amazing and loving, and in many ways it has brought us closer together.  Their bedrooms are still hazardous waste zones though, the little bastards.