Talking to children about cancer – Samantha

 

Samantha also received helpful advice from her family doctor about how best to talk to her daughter about cancer.

Transcript

I think that’s what made me the most anxious about the whole thing, what do I say to a 7-year old? The advice that I got from my GP (General Practitioner) was to tell her as much as she asks. Don’t tell her more than she needs to know. His advice was, be as open as you can with her because children can feel like they’ve been lied to if they don’t get the straight bit. So we were pretty straight with her about what was happening. She wanted to know where the cancer was and could she touch it, so we let her. We took her to a chemo session towards the end and she came to my last one and helped me ring the bell. She came to a couple radiation sessions and asked if she could come in and see what it was like when they were setting up, as much as she asked we let her know.


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