Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 2 - The Unit

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The news of deaths of children outside the Unit also passes quickly to those who knew the family. It is no less devastating to those who did not. It is the reminder of the perilous situation which the parents of cancer children had to face.

Death as a stage within the lifecycle of a cancer stricken child was the stage which everyone lived with daily. I had always regarded this as the ultimate and that there could be no worse. Slowly I realised that things could actually get worse and that there were stages beyond this.

Beyond the death of your child is Class Five, the last and incomprehensible stage. This is where the Death's cruel ratchet keeps turning. There is another death. It may be a sibling or a wife or husband.

We reached Class Four, but I cannot imagine what Class Five is like. To me, having lost a child, I cannot comprehend how you deal with another death. I know a handful of families who have either lost a parent or another child having already lost one child.

It is extremely sobering seeing your worst nightmares realised in another family when contemplating the next potential stage in your child's illness. Always there is the realisation that this could so easily be you.

All my descriptions of life within the Unit so far are understandable at some level. The following is not. There was a very weird attitude which I saw many many times in the Royal Marsden Hospital. I cannot explain it and I do not know if it occurs elsewhere. It involves a surreal competition regarding the severity of your child’s illness. This is the Keeping-up with-the-Jones’s syndrome which in the outside world goes something like this -

“I've just bought the latest BMW, What do you think of her?”

“Ah well, we've decided to keep the old Volvo, and go on holiday to the Seychelles this year.”

“Ah but .........”

Ah but it's not like that at all within the Unit. What occurs is bizarre in the extreme. You start talking to someone and the conversation comes round to your child's illness.

“My child has SuperX dyoblastoid megasonic dephlamoma. It's very very rare.”

Rarity is at a premium here. The rarer the better. More points for rare.

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