On my first post regarding my breast cancer diagnosis I said one of the worst things was that my sisters and girls are now high risk. I now have a single worst thing with this little speed bump in our lives. Telling our children.
We have two girls, K, nearly eight and, A, 11 1/2, and a five-year-old boy, T. We decided to tell our oldest first. We knew we could tell her a little more and she is our most dramatic and we were afraid she would really get upset and wanted to be able to talk to her. Yes, she was really upset, as we fully expected she would be. I cried, Tony teared up and we comforted her. She is scared and wants to stay with me at the hospital when I have surgery. After we told her we had our two youngest come in our room and crawl up on the bed with us and we told them. I didn't know my heart could hurt more after telling A. K is very tender-hearted, loving and sensitive. She was kind of flipping through a book as we told them and you could see the sadness come over her face, but she was trying to hold it in. I asked her to come up and see me. I put my arms around her and she laid her head on my lap and started to cry. I stroked her hair and told her everything was going to be okay. She kept crying and I asked her, "What about this makes you sad?" and she said, "I don't want you to have surgery" and she started crying a little harder. All we could do was continue to comfort her and tell her that I had a really good doctor that would get rid of it. During this time Tyler was curled up with Tony and then he slipped off the bed and disappeared. Shortly after he returned with Kenna's favorite fuzzy blanket and handed it to her. A little while later he made another trip upstairs to get A her favorite blanket and to fetch his. What a sweet little boy. I asked T the same question I asked K, "What about this makes you sad?" He said, "I don't want you to leave." Ugh. We reassured him that I wasn't leaving. I might just be in the hospital for a night or two. Abigail came back in the room a little later and curled up with all of us on our bed and we just laid together on the bed, cuddling in silence and being a little sad, though knowing everything would be all right. I told them that, "Everything is going to be okay, there are just a couple of bumps getting there."
K asked me a question while she was so sad and laying with her head in my lap that will forever haunt me, "Can you die?" I broke down crying & told her, "No. Everybody with this kind of cancer gets better." That's a big question for a little girl to ask her mom. She clung to my arm & said, "I love you". They make choosing my treatment option a little bit easier. I don't ever want to tell them that again. I don't ever want a reoccurrence that I can't confidently answer her question with a "No". They are all a bit sad, but we keep hugging them and reminding them of the "good things" about it. The doctor's can get rid of it and everybody with this cancer gets better. Sweet little, strong souls we have.
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