How does childhood cancer affect the rest of the family?
Julia H. Rowland, Ph.D.Director, Office of Cancer Survivorship, NCI
and
Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD
Assistant Professor, UCSF Comprehensive Cancer Center
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ROWLAND
Having a child with a life threatening illness in the family is probably one of the most devastating situations that a family can find its self.
ROWLAND
The parents are traumatized and they carry that history with them, and the siblings are often neglected in that picture, so they also carry the burden. Of that, if you talk to them, "Well, I thought that my brother or sister was going to die," or they maybe they are chronically worried about there own health--worried that the clock is ticking and that they too will develop cancer. So the issues are very different for children than in adults, who also may come with more experience about the hospital, more resources available to them it is a different context.
HAAS-KOGAN
What parents will frequently ask me is "Why," and I try to gauge what are they really asking. Like when my kid asks me questions about sensitive topics I don't really want to talk to them about, I try to gauge what are they really asking; and very frequently parents are asking me did they have a hand or a role in their child's cancer, and I try to explain very vehemently that the answer is no. That it's truly bad luck and that they have been dealt a difficult hand, but all of us together as a team are there for them and forever to try to deal with their cancer and try to cure them.