When we told the family

What do you say to your family? How do you start the conversation? When is the right time? How will they react? Cancer has such a negative connotation that you automatically don’t want to say anything to anyone until at least you understand what’s going on.

So that’s what we did.

Our girls have always been our strength. But we had to 'teach them' to stay positive for this.

We had told our daughters about the "lump on the neck," and I don’t think they were too concerned – especially seeing our healthy lifestyle choices (for the most part, I’ll get into that in another post). As my concern grew, and especially after the diagnosis, I had to tell someone. So I told my sisters first.

Telling someone causes an interesting reaction: it makes it all that much more real. "My husband has cancer." I felt fearful of the unknown, but also strangely empowered to find out everything I could about this Big C and to get on the research train.

I studied Holistic Nutrition and have always worked hard to maintain a healthy, "as natural as possible" lifestyle, so I knew there were things that Kevin was doing that could change, things that we could improve on, and things that we could add to our lifestyle to rid his body of toxins and help him heal. So that’s what we focused on, while we researched.

Telling Our Daughters

We decided to talk to our girls individually and explain what happened (the diagnosis) as best as we knew, with what little info we had learned so far:

• There was cancer in the throat.

• It was (apparently) stage 1, which "improved his chances of getting rid of it".

• We were waiting for doctor’s appointments to develop.

• We were waiting to see our naturopath.

• Their dad felt fine – no symptoms whatsoever – so he was doing well for getting into treatment (i.e., no pain, no loss of appetite, no weight loss, no weakness).

  
  

Our middle daughter went first. She was the "scientist" of the three girls, and she took it quite well – although I’m sure deep inside she was scared too. She came right out and asked me, "So how did it go with the biopsy? What’s going on?" And I told her.

Our youngest daughter (18) was next. She’s very sensitive and keeps feelings inside (like her dad), so I felt a bit wary of telling her – it had to be delicately done. She cried and gave him a big hug. She didn’t say much, but later on, I went into her bedroom and found her crying again, so it was important for me to tell her that, during this journey, she was going to have to find it in herself to be very open about sharing her feelings. She told me she was just scared because the word "cancer" is such a definite, negative one, and she didn’t want to lose her Dada.

One last 'hurrah': One last ice-cream - for a while.

We had planned a family trip to visit my sister up north, and our oldest daughter and her best friend were coming with us, so we decided that would be the best time to talk with her. After all, we’d have around three hours in the car to talk. She is our worry-girl, maybe the most pessimistic of the three girls, but there really is no way to tell a daughter "Your father has been found to have cancer" without just ripping off the band-aid. She cried, was worried, asked a lot of questions, and we talked for quite a bit of time. Her best friend was there to hug and support her, and she was super invested in supporting us too, as her parents had also gone through cancer scares, so that really helped us all.

Her best friend talked about something her mother had gone through during her breast cancer treatments: emotional development. This is where you dig deep to find out the emotional reason for your cancer, and it’s a topic that I find very true, so I will talk about this in a whole separate blog post because we did find some interesting research about that. But the conversation got me thinking about the "whys" of Kevin’s cancer. You see, doctors only talk about genetics being the reason, and they ask about smoking, but the actual research they share is limited – I personally think they are uninterested in exploring all these other "reasons for cancer," so that’s also why this blog was created (wink).

Embracing Change and Support

We spent that long weekend at my sister’s, enjoying our time away from home, thinking about life and all these new challenging developments, and spending quality time together. I did bring my juicer with me and juiced for Kevin every morning because that’s what I do! Kevin knew that coming back home meant getting fully into the whole "healthier lifestyle" once we saw the naturopath and followed his advice, so this weekend he took the opportunity to have a few drinks, three or four cones of ice cream, takeout fast food, and all that stuff you’re not supposed to do. But it was okay, and looking back, I’m glad we did all that because what would come next would be such a big change... and it would last a loooong time.

After talking with the girls and spending some time with family on this adventure trip, we got back home, and I wrote the first of what would be a few "Kevin update" emails to the whole family. Many of them had already started to ask questions, so this would be the best way to give them the update from our perspective – let them digest it all, cry it out, whatever they needed to do before they called and talked. I think they all took it as positively as could be imagined, seeing how empowered we were to "get this fucking thing" and focus on Kevin’s health above anything else.

Why You Should Share Your Story

I have gone through some shitty times in my life, with some events that would blow your mind – some things that you’d never wish anyone would go through. But the one thing I’ve learned is that talking with people, telling them what’s happening, will surprisingly be one of the best things you can do. Learning to reach out to others and allowing them the opportunity to comfort, support, and give you advice is invaluable. Don’t feel like you need to go through this in silence, alone, struggling in secret, because being open to sharing your heart with others opens up such a wonderful world of supportive, positive energy. I will go through that in detail in a later write-up. But for now, please, just trust that if you don’t want to be alone in this, you need to open up and allow others to help you—it’s so important!

Next Steps: The Naturopath’s Role

The next step would be to meet with the naturopath because they are incredibly knowledgeable scientists (yes, I said that: scientists!) who focus on getting down to the root of the cause rather than just treating symptoms. And if there’s something that we have learned from, not only cancer but every other illness we’ve fought through the years, it’s that:

1. The body wants to be healthy.

2. The body has an incredible power to heal itself.

3. The mind and the body are interconnected.

4. Nature is powerful, and we can also look to it for healing rather than just the medical system.

5. Naturopaths know all of this better than we do, so they HAD to be part of Kevin’s healthcare healing team!

Empowered with the support of our girls and the rest of our family, we embraced the following upcoming week to learn more. And as Kevin’s anxiety grew, we decided that this was the time for him to continue being positive, doing some more research, and most importantly – remembering that we were a TEAM. Together, love conquers all.