Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 2 - The Unit

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In the Unit you are often thrown together with families that you would never have normally met and who often become very close friends. There is a camaraderie, a closeness, which you probably would never have achieved in the outside world. You have something in common that can only be understood by those around you. Yet that understanding is still sketchy and partial. Each family has its own terrible stories to tell. You cannot fully understand because each case is so different, but you have an empathy with those families which no-one else has, or can ever have.

The world of a Children's Cancer Unit is very abnormal with respect to the real world. Events are often serious, radical and drastic compared to normal life, but usually it never appears that way when you are there. The everyday world of a Children's Cancer Unit can be bizarre when viewed from the outside. There was a lot more laughter and a lot fewer tears than one would have expected.

When you are there you are not special, you are not different. There is always a family in as a situation as bad or worse than yours. This breeds the sort of familiarity which occurs during a war. In its own little way this is a war. All the families face their own little battles which are fought in their own and the minds of other families. "There by the grace of God, it might have been us." Parents comfort each other, laugh together and sometimes cry together. They are all in the same boat.

Everyone's situation is desperate and there is little time for self pity or isolation. Everyone copes to the best of their ability, which is usually far beyond what you or others would have expected if presented with the situation without actually being involved. You cope. You have to. Those parents who have problems coping are helped by those who are coping. Those who can cope know that they may need the same support sometime in the future or have already received the same support in the past.

We were warned when we were admitted that as parents our morale would rise and fall with the progress of Max's treatment and also with his emotional state. The first you expect but the second was disarming. If Max woke up bright and breezy then we all had a good day. If he woke up depressed then our own emotions often sank to that level. This has no relation to the progress of the treatment but it becomes impossible to dissociate yourself from it. Not only do you live with the ups and downs of your own child's illness, you also live with the ups and downs of those of other families. This may sound harsh but it is the price to be paid for the mutual support which is given.

We found, like many other parents in the Unit, that it became difficult to judge your own emotions. You are elated when there is improvement and despair when things go wrong. Slowly you realise that you are not in control of your emotions. You become enslaved by the course of the treatment and the disease. When things are steady some semblance of normality appears. But not really. It's an illusion.

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