Children

Two years ago when I had Cancer my children were 9, 6 and 2. I would imagine this paints a difficult picture. And it was, but as I've said previously, my wife handled it so well and things were as normal as was possible. The only things I think they noticed was that I was not at work and helped to get them ready for school in the morning and the fact that I was bald. A neighbour's child, a friend of my then 6 year old daughter, used to come in every day and nonchalantly say "hello baldy", which I loved. Being bald never bothered me in the slightest, an advantage of being a man I expect. It was when the eyebrows went that I looked really strange which took a little longer. Then I really did look sick.

Anyway, my 9 year old boy was at the age where all he cared about were his friends and his nintendo (which is even worse now), the 2 year old was too young to know any difference. But the then 6 year old girl was a revelation. She was acutely aware of what was going on, always watching me out of the corner of her eye..."are you alright there Dad?", "can I get you anything Dad?". At 6 this was astonishing but I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised as girls (and women) in general are better at that than us.  One of my favourite memories of that time was when she fell off her bicycle (bare with me). She came in howling with two cut knees, two cut elbows, a gash on her chin and all the blood that  minor cuts can pump out. In the middle of this she started yelling "I don't want to die, I don't want to die". I love this. In the middle of my cancer nightmare, between chemo sessions and coming off steroids, she was saying this. This is one I'll be bringing up when I'm making a speech at her wedding to ensure her husband (or wife :)) to be knows what their getting into.

People asked us, "did you tell the children what was going on?". And we did. We were very open with them. We first suspected things were not going in when the 6 year old came home from school one day and said she had told her teacher that her Dad was sick. When asked what was wrong with him she said "Alcoholic". Me thinks something got lost in translation.

Then, about 2 months after everything was finished we were at dinner one evening and we asked the 9 year old and 6 year old to remember the Summer and asked what had been wrong with Daddy. Totally blank faces resulted. We started laughing and pushed saying, 'you do remember Dad was sick?'. They did. A few minutes later the 9 year old said "Malaria". The only reason this came into his hear he later told me was that he thought I had the same sickness as Cheryl Cole, who did indeed have Malaria that Summer.

So my conclusion is that my sickness has no impact on my children. Well that's something anyway.