Shelley encouraged her teenage children to be as open about her situation as they wanted to be with other people. This proved to be the right decision for this family.

Transcript

The kids all got home from school that afternoon. We sat them down. They were teenagers, first year university and two in high school and I let them know that I was diagnosed with cancer that a biopsy was going to happen and that’s all I knew. Lots of tears, lots of questions. The one thing I wanted them to know was that it was absolutely okay to text their friends, to let their friends know, to talk about it with their friends’ parents because at that age friends are their life. And then, they worry about themselves. Parents are somewhere down lower on that priority list. I didn’t want them to be scared in silence or alone and I wanted them to be able to ask me and my husband questions. That was something my husband and I had spoke about before we told the kids. Now that it’s been almost 3 years since that initial diagnosis, we’ve talked about how we told them and whether or not we should have said talk to your friends. They thought that was absolutely awesome that they didn’t feel they had to sneak and it was a secret that the family had. Their friends were open to ask us questions as well. It just so happened with my daughter going into nursing, and for her friends in nursing I became their test patient in many regards. It was a good learning experience but we always said “If you don’t know don’t be scared of what you don’t know, ask and if we don’t know the answer we would find the answer.”

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