If you are reading this, my heart goes out to you. Cancer is a very difficult and confusing journey regardless of whether you are the patient, or the patient’s family member or friend.
When my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer, one of the most difficult things we had to do was to explain what was happening to him to our six-year-old son, Logan. Just as we found our conversations with our doctor informative and helpful, we thought that Logan would benefit from an explanation about the process.
The book that you are holding is how we explained cancer to him. We chose to use the most common metaphor – the battle between good and evil, since we knew that even at his young age, he would be able to grasp it.
While writing this book, I purposely chose not to use the word death. I believe that it is up to each family to decide when and if they want to introduce this concept. The fact is that medications are getting more sophisticated, and patients are living longer than before. More people than ever survive cancer.
We chose to introduce this idea of death when Alfredo entered hospice, and I believe that this was the right choice for us. Having said that, we were always honest with Logan. When he asked if Alfredo would die, we would always say that we didn’t know, but that we were hopeful. We would then refocus the conversation on the latest treatment. We never said that Alfredo would recover, which was very hard at the time, but it was the right choice in the end. In this book I come very close to this idea, and l leave it up to you to decide if and when to discuss this difficult issue.
Finally, as you are going to progress though this process, I would encourage you to seek support. There are a number of great organizations that focus on helping families that are battling cancer.
Love,
Joanna
