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← Return to Being a Grandmother
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I had breast cancer 30 years ago with 3 young children- 11,9,5. I’m a pediatrician- just like @cmdw2600 daughter- in- law.
I explained everything according to their level of understanding. They saw me sick from the chemo for 6 months. My 9 year old thought I would die and slept in my room every night during chemo, the 11 year old understood that I was sick because of the medicine and would be well after it was done. The 5 year old boy seemed ok with the explanation.
It was frightening for them to see me get violently ill. However, at the time we had a young puppy in the house who recently had been spayed. When she came back from the vet she was sick and vomited a lot from the anesthesia. I just explained that I was sick just like the puppy but I was going to get better. That explanation worked well to relax them.
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I appreciate how bold and honest you were able to be. It must have helped everyone--probably to this very day. When my daughter was six her dad, my first husband, died after surgery. I was as direct as possible, but I did not share the depth of my grief with her as that felt private. I wanted her to feel she still had a grown-up in charge. Now my daughter is 34, her daughter is four, and I want to neither hide my breast cancer nor unduly burden my grand-daughter. But she is a flexible child with a lot of extended family--and knows that ways of doing things vary from household to household. These comments are supportive--I'm working on being myself with her now as I usually do.