Michelle asked me to write a guest post for her really unique blog. When I first heard about her Living Sunny Side Up and added her to my small, evolving blogroll, I had to create an entirely new category. She addresses a situation that is so common to adult cancer survivors that it is surprising no one else had yet conceived a blog dedicated to helping cancer victims deal with parenting issues.
When I was first diagnosed, I had already been working as a cancer nurse for most of my children’s lives. I have a photo of my two oldest boys, now 34 and 31, as two young boys, shirts off, with me drawing a skeleton on Nathan’s chest, and organs – heart, lungs, stomach, liver – on Ben’s. They became part of my nursing school experience. I would sometimes take them to the university swimming pool, arriving there from the underground maintenance tunnels that linked the buildings on campus. Later, when I worked in the hospital, I would take for tours. Sometimes we would stop and visit with some of my patients.
I had been working in oncology for 15 years when I was diagnosed, working at the bedside, serving as manager, serving as mentor and teacher. I had given talks around the country and around the world. I had taught cancer nursing in a dozen developing countries.
And yet on the day that I was given a differential diagnosis of lymphoma or leukemia, none of this experience had prepared me or my family for how to react or how even to talk about it. From my journal:
I get home and my youngest son, Aaron, runs out to tell me that he has had three calls from doctors in the past 10 minutes. Two from Tom, our family doctor, and one from a new doctor who told him that I have a Friday morning appointment. Aaron is getting ready to leave for a four day National Catholic Youth Conference in downtown Indianapolis. He had noticed on Tuesday the bandage and cotton ball on my arm. And he now realized that I had taken the day off from work. I have not thought this through and vaguely worry that I may be in the hospital by the weekend, before he returns home. So I sit Aaron down on the front steps and tell him that I might have a type of cancer. I start to get tearful which I did not want to do – not now. I regain control. I tell him to pray for our family during his retreat. Then I send him off.
As soon as they drive away I worry that I have made a mistake in telling him like that. I try to call out to them as they back their car into the street. I want to tell Norma, the group leader and our neighbor, what was going on and what I had told Aaron. But they do not hear me.
I was soon in the heat and fury of active treatment. It was left to my wife, Tish, to deal with the parenting issues. My oldest two were living their young adult lives by then. So I cannot pretend that I know much about dealing with young children at home. I have two young granddaughters now, 4 and 16 months, with twin baby girls on the way. I am grateful that they were born after my illness, spared the confusion.
Here we are, some years later, and I have an eight-month old blog, Being Cancer, dedicated to “networking people transformed by cancer.” Michelle generously thought that there might be something of value at my site specifically for parents with cancer.
The most popular feature is Cancer Blog Links , containing over 600 blogs divided by disease category. Parents with cancer may find some new perspective in the categories populated by children’s cancers – neuroblastoma, leukemia, and brain cancers mainly. Scattered throughout the list are hundreds of blogs by people who are also parents of young children, including many of the breast cancer bloggers. Also see Mothers with Cancer blog.
Mondays are Book Club discussions. In the archives are reflections on our first selection, The Last Lecture, in which a dying father’s concerns for his young children are central themes. In the Reviews section you can find book and movie reviews related to cancer. A recent review of My Life Without Me deals with maternal legacy concerns. My Cancer Resources page contains close to 300 references. Although I have not started annotating the list, relevant material may be found in the ‘Support” and “Childhood Cancers” sections. And, of course, shamelessly sprinkled throughout the site are dozens of photos of my girls, Sophie and Isabel.
I thank Michelle for this opportunity to introduce my site. I look forward to your visits and comments.
Dennis Pyritz, RN, BA, BSN
Being cancer, networking people transformed by cancer
