Kids and cancer

Having kids before you have cancer is a true blessing. When you have chemo, it damages your reproductive organs and possibly your ability to have kids in the future so the fact that we knew with 100% certainty that we were done after Sofia is a true blessing.

Being a mom and having cancer DOES come with his challenges though. Like, what do you say to your kids? My kids are 4 and 21 months; how do you communicate such a big life event to such young kids?

We told our girls while having dinner one night when we were still in Seattle. The conversation was brief and went something like this:

Me: So girls, your dad and I want to talk to you about why mom has been going to the hospital so much lately.
Anabelle: ok.
JM: Girls, your mom is sick but is going to be fine. She has something called cancer but they have good medicine that is going to make her feel better so you guys don't have to worry.
Me: Yup! Mom is going to be just fine. It's just going to take some time and I might be tired but soon enough I'll be all better.
Anabelle: ok. So can we talk about how my day was now?

We decided to drop the conversation and not harp on it or talk more about it since Anabelle had very clearly communicated to us that she had had enough. But the other night when I was laying down after my treatment Anabelle asked me, "Mom, why do u have to get medicine all the time?" I responded by reminding her that I have cancer and the only way to get better is by getting lots of medicine.

It makes me wonder if I'm doing this whole 'mom with cancer' gig the way it's supposed to be done. We have an appointment with a family therapist at Stanford who specialized in helping cancer patients but that's not until August. As with every parenting issue, I know there's no one way or perfect way but I hope, hope, hope that I'm not messing up my kids by saying too much or too little.

On Friday, we met with the Associate Director of the Stanford Clinical Cancer Genetics Program about my BRCA2 gene mutation. We got more information on what it means to have this mutation. The highlights: double mastectomy is an option, not a MUST; ovaries need to be removed at age 40 to prevent ovarian cancer; there is a 50/50 chance I passed this mutation to the girls; and if they had to guess, I most likely got this gene from my dad's side. My dad's family is a predominantly male family and their guess is that the gene mutation has been hidden through the generations. For an adult male, carrying the BRCA 2 gene mutation only slightly increases risks of certain cancers, so it's not necessary for my brother to get tested until he wants to have kids. Both my parents and my sister are being tested so we have a full picture of who has this mutation in a few weeks.

One amazing thing we learned today is that if we wanted to have another baby we can ensure with 100% certainty that the new baby will not have this gene mutation. It's called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. They would take my eggs and screen them for the gene mutation, toss the eggs with the mutation and implant only the healthy eggs with the healthy sperm. Pretty amazing, huh? The good thing about this gene mutation is that it cannot skip a generation; meaning if I didn't pass it onto my girls, that's the end of the line! I only wish I had known about it before we had kids, but that's a moot point now.

My girls have 20 years before they have to worry about whether they inherited the mutation. I pray they didn't inherit it, but if they did my hope is research and development on breast and ovarian cancers and BRCA gene mutation carriers will have advanced so much that it will be only a minor issue for them to deal with. Knowing how far we've come since 1992, I have faith that we'll make great strides in the next two decades.