Part 3 How NOT to tell your daughter she has cancer…

It was less than an hour after hearing that Melanie had cancer and there we were, trying to make our way back through the maze of hallways to find the recovery room. Forty-five minutes to not only absorbed the shock, but also figure out how to tell her the news.  Actually, the doctor had told us he would come in and tell her while we were with her. But he would leave and then what would we say?  

First though, maybe it would be good to hear Melanie’s version about how the next few minutes went. She recorded this a couple of years ago as Part of a 5 part series on “YouTube” called “Stories of Survivorship.”

 

Yep, that is the way it happened. Every time I watch that video clip, my heart breaks a little bit more. Coming into her curtained off cubbyhole in the recovery room, I was desperately trying to control my tears. As would be expected, Melanie looked dazed, exhausted, and a bit disoriented, but still greeted us with a smile. We chatted made small jokes, held her hand, found her glasses, and babbled some kind of nonsense. I can’t say that way of coping has changed much over the years. (Melanie has since told me that even in her groggy state she could tell by our faces that something was wrong.) It was not long before the doctor appeared and began to talk. As I watched, her face went from a smile to confusion until a spark comprehension dawned. The doctor was upbeat and direct, repeating the “good kind of cancer” comment; it could be treated easily with surgery. She could leave the hospital as soon as she felt like it. Then he was gone.

At that moment, my only desire was to take Melanie home. I’m not sure what I thought that would accomplish, but I wanted her in her own bed in our house. Unfortunately, nausea had set in so we had to wait for that to subside. It was in that first recovery room that she discovered an endless supply of graham crackers to curb her nausea. They would become a staple in our house for months.

After a couple of hours, we wheeled her out into fresh air and fading daylight gently transferring her into our car and heading home. Fortunately, the residual anesthesia in her system protected her from turns and bumps in the road and soon we settled her into her stripped down room. (Most her belongings still packed in the hallway.) Exhausted, she wanted sleep, but could not leave her side. I sat just watching her breathe. In a matter of hours she had become much younger in my eyes—the little girl I sat up with at night through asthma attacks and earaches. She woke was for pain medication, but I don’t I remember much conversation about her new diagnosis that night. (It amazes me how much I find myself writing those words—“I don’t remember.” How could I forget anything of those first hours?)

What I do remember is that in the living room Chris was beginning to make phone calls to our closest family and friends to tell them what was going on, and then the phone ringing. He talked, I simply couldn’t, an unusual state for me. I am a talker—it is the way I process the world and the way I make my living—but for days, the only people I could bear to talk to were Melanie, Chris and Justin. I hid and let Chris do all the talking for me.

So I said I would tell you the ways NOT to tell a child they have cancer. Looking back and talking to Melanie, there are things I wish we had done differently. The first was hitting Melanie with the news when she was in such a vulnerable state. She could barely comprehend being out of surgery much less having medical terminology thrown at her. What harm would it have done, to wait at least a few hours? While perhaps not practical, but it might have made it not so incomprehensible in the moment. The second was taking Melanie’s news spreading it so quickly. It was her news to tell and she has told us just how much she wishes she could have made the decision when that news got disseminated. While used to her being an adult in so many ways, when she got sick, we threw ourselves into being her parents. Perhaps this was the beginning of the dilemma of having an young adult child with cancer, because I also believe that as much as it was Melanie’s news, it was ours as well. As parents we were lost in new territory and needed support, too. It was perhaps first, but certainly not the last, of many balancing acts that we continue to learn to negotiate over the years.

Next…Where do we go from here?