I just wanted to add that I have now told my 14 & 12 year old children, and while my daughter was pretty upset, my son took it pretty well since he is autistic and things don’t look different at the moment, he will struggle when changes happen.
But I thought I would share the analogy I used to explain what cancer is and how it is treated in case it helps anyone else. I did hear it on a podcast by the cancer council talking to someone from canteen, but added a little since I’m a science teacher.
“So think of an oval covered in grass. The oval represents your whole body and the individual blades of grass represent the cells in your body. Your cells need certain things in order to grow and function- water, sunlight and carbon dioxide. But sometimes other things that don’t belong also use the same things to grow, like weeds. Weeds are like cancer cells that can grow where they are not supposed to, simply because they gain nutrients in the same way as blades of grass do. Except weeds take over in a space, and this is where a tumour grows. When that happens, something has to be done.”
It’s at this point I asked them what you normally do for weeds. Most kids will say to pull them out. So when my son said this I continued:
“Pulling the weeds is what surgery does. Sometimes you just have to pull gently and only take the weed itself, and otherwise you have to use a trowel and dig up the weed which will take some of the grass with it too, but the weed can’t continue taking over. If the problem is bigger then sometimes you might need to use a weed killer to kill the weeds so they can’t grow anymore.”
Then I questioned them about what happens to the grass around the weed if you spray the weed killer. They usually understand that some of the grass will die too. So then I use that analogy from the beginning where just like the weed grows in the same conditions as the grass, the grass can die from the poison sprayed on the plant too. That’s where medicines like chemotherapy will work at killing the cancer cells but can damage and kill other cells too so it makes people sick.
And both of them got it- they aren’t little so the explanation was more complex, but I really liked how the original example was a simple analogy that most kids will be able to pick up on and understand why it develops and how it’s treated. It’s been almost a week, and while my daughter is emotional like me so has been upset and clingy, my son has had a few chats with myself and his psychologist to discuss things like surgery and chemotherapy since and has assured me he is ok with it.
I’m still hiding it at work and with the lack of sleep and just generally feeling rundown is not helping. The diagnosis is all I have at the moment with a few weeks yet before I attend the breast clinic, so I keep trying to bring down any spikes in emotion or stress. As I work in year to year contracts and don’t have any other income I still need to see if I even have a job next year which is normally a stressful time already without all the extra. If they know, unfortunately my chances at a job are low so it’s important to me for the moment to keep it quiet. I have some people I trust who I can talk to about it, but sometimes I feel weird talking about it because I don’t want to make it all about the diagnosis and yet in the back of my mind it is all about it and hoping that the next lot of scans are clear and plans can start being made.
Sorry about the essay, thanks for your patience!
