Since chemo cycle 1 I have had over a week of feeling very well and I have really enjoyed doing activities with the children. It has felt like such a blessing to have this time, being able to do normal things and enjoy life. I home educate my children and this week 'school' was based around their new interest in garden birds, which for me has been a complete distraction from chemo.
For each chemo cycle I plan to send my three children to stay with either set of grandparents. That way I get peace and quiet at home and know that the children are well cared for. However I do miss them when they are away; it's one of the many nasty things about chemo for me.
Some of my preparation for chemo involved preparing the children for what was likely to happen. The hospital gave us a children's book called 'Mummy's Lump' which is a picture book aimed at young children and is the story of a fictitious family where the mother has treatment for breast cancer. It's been good for introducing the children to what is likely to happen to me and all three of them enjoy reading it. I particularly like the last page where the treatment has finished and they are all having fun at the beach.
I have also talked to the children about the importance of good hygiene, particulaly while I'm on chemo, with hand washing etc and we had a lesson on the components of blood to show them the implications of a low white blood cell count. We had fun making blood cells out of playdough! A friend of ours who happens to be a biotechnician in a hospital extended that today and gave us a lesson on what happens to blood samples in the laboratory. Very interesting!
They haven't seemed worried at all about what we are going through and I hope we can keep it that way. I do get nervous when people talk about cancer and death in the same breath, but so far the children don't seem to have thought about that possibility. They love all the visits with friends and grandparents they have been having while I'm ill.
