Our children learn our cancer lessons as we do.
BY Laura Yeager
PUBLISHED February 20, 2018
As well as being a cancer blogger, Laura Yeager is a religious essayist and a mental health blogger. A graduate of The Writers’ Workshop at The University of Iowa, she teaches writing at Kent State University and Gotham Writers’ Workshop. Laura survived cancer twice.
My 13-year-old son Tommy and his classmates in seventh grade did a really loving thing recently. For Valentine's Day, they made blankets for local kids hospitalized with cancer. I applaud the teacher who organized this service project. It taught the kids a great deal about cancer - that children are not immune from the disease; that a nice, warm blanket can be comforting in the hospital; that cancer is no fun; that it's important to remember the less fortunate and give a little of yourself.
But Tommy already knows a lot about cancer. In many ways, he's an expert. This is because he's seen me go through it twice - once, when he was 8 in 2012 and again in 2016, when he was 12.
Tommy has certainly been exposed to the perils of cancer, in my case, breast cancer. He's seen me lie on the couch in pain from recent surgery, cry with worry about the future, pray with all my might that everything will be OK, complain about how radiation burns the skin until its brittle bright pink, get hideous mouth sores from chemo and lose my hair and fingernails from chemo.
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But Tommy already knows a lot about cancer. In many ways, he's an expert. This is because he's seen me go through it twice - once, when he was 8 in 2012 and again in 2016, when he was 12.
Tommy has certainly been exposed to the perils of cancer, in my case, breast cancer. He's seen me lie on the couch in pain from recent surgery, cry with worry about the future, pray with all my might that everything will be OK, complain about how radiation burns the skin until its brittle bright pink, get hideous mouth sores from chemo and lose my hair and fingernails from chemo.
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