The day our daughter was diagnosed with childhood cancer, the life we knew and loved suddenly disappeared. Things became so vastly different and foreign to us. Sure, in the beginning there were many prayers and an overwhelming amount of support from our great little town. Unfortunately, for some, their support came in the form of opinions. Opinions from people who could barely imagine the magnitude of the travesty we were experiencing. People who had never even heard the word "cancer" within their immediate family with a parent, grandparent or adult sibling -- let alone their child -- were trying to help by offering their opinions based on their Google research.
These opinions ranged from what we should only allow our daughter to eat and drink to, “Well, essential oils has been known to heal cancers…” and finally (my personal favorite), “I wouldn’t dare let those doctors put that poison in my child’s body. I’d take them to a state where marijuana is legal and treat them holistically.” Haha, aren’t you just a little genius!
It isn’t just our family that has experienced these opinions. Apparently people across the world are under the impression that there are holistic or all natural options in childhood cancer treatment.
Y'all -- I truly do hate to be the bearer of bad news and burst your happy, opinionated bubble, but there are no options when your child is diagnosed with cancer. There is no loading that very fragile, deathly ill child of yours up in a car, and certainly not on a plane, and dragging them halfway across the country for holistic treatment!
Childhood cancer is a complete 180 from adult cancers, and often more aggressive and destructive in only a matter of weeks. Your child will die if you chose to “seek other options.” Not to mention the fact that once your doctor has figured out that your child has cancer, you're shipped to a specialist hospital, and if you refuse to go or refuse the treatment options that hospital has provided to you via FDA approved treatments, they have the right -- and will exercise that right -- to take your child from you and ship your opinionated tail to jail. And rightfully so.
This is the life of your child we’re talking about. Would you be willing to risk it based off of your own uneducated opinion? That’s right, I said uneducated. Your opinions are so far-fetched from correct or even the slightest bit logical if you think you know better than these doctors who have studied the existence of childhood cancer for the majority of their life.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Was I furious because my daughter faced only a 50 percent chance of survival because of the extremely aggressive nature of her cancer? That all rights and options in the matter of life or death for our child were taken from us because she would have succumbed to her cancer in a matter of weeks, or even days, had she not begun the extremely aggressive chemotherapy that caused her hair to fall out on only day three of treatment, and her GI system to temporarily shut down after just day six of treatment?
Yes! Furious is an understatement. Fury was only the beginning. I watched my child be ripped away from her home, family and friends; forced in a hospital for seven months and made to deal with depression and anxiety at only 3-years-old. This child of mine has dealt with more pain, sickness and agony than most people have in 85 to 90 years of life, as has every child enduring the battle of childhood cancer!
My daughter lost her childhood on September 15, 2015, the day she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Today, four months out of treatment, we go once a month to make sure this monster hasn’t returned, and only by God’s marvelous grace, it has not!
Not all children, however; are lucky enough to hear the words “remission” or “no evidence of disease,” let alone the most anticipated word, “survivor.” And you have the nerve to walk up to these people who are staring death in the face at the cost of their child and mock their decision on treatment.
We are given no options, nor would you if tomorrow you heard the words, “Your child has cancer.” Sure, there are a whopping one percent of childhood cancers that are “non-aggressive” and present the rare case that you may be given the option to seek a doctor who specializes in holistic treatments to keep the cancer at bay. But keep in mind that still leaves 99 percent of childhood cancers in the “aggressive to extremely aggressive” category in which there are no other options. In these cases your opinions don’t matter -- your words are completely silent.
No matter how much you beg and plead, nothing will change the options you have for treatment for your child that's just been diagnosed with cancer.
Thank goodness there is one thing you can do to help better these situations for tomorrow.
Do your research on organizations; find one that does the most for childhood cancer research. Get involved, spread the word and make a difference in the world of childhood cancer. Make it so that, if tomorrow you heard the words you fear the most, that fear would be obsolete because better, safer and more effective treatments have been created, tested and approved. That FDA treatment options no longer have the potential to pose a threat to your child’s life in order to save it.
Overall, pray continually every single day for those battling childhood cancer and the life long side effects that come from it. And pray for those fighting tirelessly to find a cure!
