The Hardest Conversation Ever

My anxiety levels were still through the roof. I’d been walking around with a BIG secret for over a week now and having to hide it from my kids was wearing me down. Their dad and I needed to tell them before word got out. They needed to hear it from us. So now we had a little more information, we just picked a day to tell them and we had to follow through.

It was a Wednesday. My youngest Oliver (who was only 3) would be at my parents for a couple of hours so we could focus on talking with the older two. I was a nervous wreck the whole day leading up to it. I mean, shaking, sick to the stomach nervous. I just could not believe that I had to do this. That I had to tell them that I was going to change right before their eyes. The guilt was eating me up inside. I felt like I was honestly shattering their lives and it was so unfair.

So we gave them dinner and showers and sat them down on the couch. We told them that the reason Mummy had a few doctor appointments lately was because I have a lump/tumour in my booby that shouldn’t be there and could grow and spread. That I needed to have strong medicine called ‘chemotherapy’ to make the lump smaller and get rid of it. That the chemotherapy would possibly make me sick, very tired and also make my hair fall out.

Well, that was it. It was the hair falling out that was the final straw. My daughter Amelia lost it, started sobbing and crying that she didn’t want all my hair to fall out. Noah saw Amelia’s reaction and also became hysterical. So we just hugged them, fighting back our own tears and reassuring them that it would grow back, it wasn’t forever, it was just part of the treatment to get rid of this tumour.

If you could have heard the sobbing and hysterics that went on . . . you heart would have been broken too.

After a bit, the shock wore off and they calmed down somewhat. We were able to talk a bit more calmly again. They asked questions. We answered them as honestly as we could. The questions were fairly simple such as “Will it hurt” and “When will your hair grow back” and “Can I see the tumour”. Thank goodness neither of them asked if I was going to die. That was my biggest fear but their innocent little minds never went there.

We deliberately didn’t use the word “cancer” in this conversation. I wanted to avoid that word if I could because of the negative and scary connotations it has. I didn’t want some kid at school telling my child that their “aunty/grandad/friend/butcher had cancer and died”.

Thomas made them a special dessert then to boost the mood a little and not long after my parents arrived with Oliver. Of course both kids had to “tell” Grandma and Grandad that Mummy has a tumour in her booby and needs chemotherapy. They had started accepting their new reality already. Amazing.

This was the hardest conversation of my life. But now that it was done I felt a weight had been lifted and I could breathe again. We were all in this together. From that point on, it just became part of our everyday conversation whether they asked another question or I slipped a little joke about losing my hair in here or there just to get them more used to the idea.

We had decided not to try to sit Oliver down and tell him anything. We really didn’t think any of it would make sense to him at the stage he was at and that has worked out fine as time went on. Hopefully he won’t remember any of it.

Everyone told me that kids are much more resilient then we give them credit for. And I have seen it with my own eyes now. They are extraordinary. Honesty, age-appropriate information and oodles of love and affection is what they deserve and need. Gosh I love them so much. xxx