Hi, new here and looking for some help on how to tell my kids that their Grandma has stomach cancer? Youngest is 14 and we think she will handle it better than her older sister.
Eldest is 22 but has chronic anxiety about her health and OCD too. She is really struggling at the moment with it, she doesn't want to go to sleep at night for fear of dying, her headaches are tumours, it is ruling her life at the moment and we are not sure how she will handle the news.
Doctors have found cancer inside a stomach ulcer, going in for surgery on 23rd April and Oncologist is confident that when they remove the ulcer, and 3/4 of her stomach along with it that the cancer will be gone. I'm not sure how to tell her but she deserves to know.
We can't tell the youngest the truth and not her older sister, youngest will inadvertently tell the eldest and we need it to come from us.
Appreciate any advice, thank you for reading.
Hi Mikey
Welcome to our community, I hope you find it both informative and supportive.
I am Steve one of the community champions here. My experience with cancer is via my wife who has Leiomyosarcoma - fortunately her cancer is stable and has been for some years now.
Our son was fairly young when my wife was diagnosed and so I asked the same sort of questions, we found the information in talking to children and teenagers quite helpful as was the book The Secret C by Julia Stokes.
New to the community is a bit like our welcome mat here, you might like to look at our Stomach cancer forum where there will be people with lots of experience with this type of cancer and you might also like to look at and join our Family and friends forum where we support everyone affected by the cancer.
Our son's school was very supportive and by sharing with them it meant he received a consistent answer from all trusted adults and I think that was really very helpful.
Hope some of that helps, do feel free to post on here whenever as someone is always listening.
<<hugs>>
Steve
