Telling my daughter

This is the first time this whole diagnosis has gotten me down. It’s not because I’m contemplating my mortality or any of that navel-gazing stuff, but because I have to sit down with my 8-year-old daughter and tell her that I have cancer, and what it means for her. Just so there’s no confusion, my daughter lives part of the time with me and part of the time with her mother, which will also explain some things I don’t know.

It’s weird writing an outline to talk to your kid, but I want to make sure I cover certain topics. I’ve read CancerCare’s booklet Helping Children When a Family Member Has Cancer, which I’m using as a general guide. But I also have to make sure I differentiate between what I have and the fact that her maternal grandmother also has cancer. Not sure what the prognosis is on her grandmother, but I imagine that the prognosis and treatment of the return of breast cancer in a nearly 80-year-old woman is different from the prognosis and treatment of a brand-new lymphoma in a man half her age.

It’s also weird not being willing to say to her definitively that I’m not going to die and feel like I’m being honest. I can tell her it’s unlikely, I can tell her that my doctors and I are doing everything possible to cure me, but I can’t honestly look her in the eye and say for certain that it’s not going to happen. I guess in some way it is like facing my mortality.