Dealing with Cancer

Last week was devastating, my partner's brother was diagnosed with Leukaemia and Lymphoma and is currently undergoing chemotherapy.  He has been poorly since Christmas and was told it was viral, but after a sudden decline in his health was admitted to hospital and after a CAT scan it was confirmed he has a huge mass on his chest.  We all take life for granted until something happens to a loved one, he is only 34 years old and just become a daddy for the first time.  Grotbags is mortified, her beloved Uncle is seriously ill and she cannot understand it.

So how would you explain Cancer to a 10 year old, after discussions with my colleagues at work, one of whom is a Macmillan nurse we are trying to make sense of it by:

• Reassuring her that there are good treatments available for cancer today and that his prognosis is good.
• Not to worry about the future and to concentrate on making him smile, we have made cards and we are also creating a loom hat out of special wool for when he loses his hair.
• I've explained that the medicine he will have, will more than likely make him very poorly but he needs this to kill the nasty cells in his body.
• Not hiding it from her, we made this mistake because she obviously knew that something was wrong.  We have since apologised to her and told her that we didn't want to upset her.

Limited information is better than none at all and the only thing Grotbag really seems concerned about at the present time is he will lose his hair.  In future we aim to answer all her questions as openly and honestly as possible, afterall you can't kid a child.