Memories of Max - A Father's Story

Chapter 6 - Reactions

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“I just want Max to come home from the hospital and go to school with me. I want him to be like other brothers and be at school with his sister.”

Paula was a very outgoing child. She had the most amazingly loud and infectious laugh and giggles which attracted attention wherever she went. Sometimes at the hospital when we felt frazzled her vitality became too much to bear but more often than not her exuberance pulled us together when Max’s condition had deteriorated.

Generally Paula coped so well in the face of our family turmoil. Sometimes she had nightmares. One involved an earthquake which was going to swallow us all up. She was later worried that Sara was getting old presumably with the assumption that Sara's life might also be in danger. Paula, too, had her stresses.

There is a common tendency for parents to concentrate on the child with cancer at the expense of the other siblings. It is a natural reaction but if at all possible should be avoided at any cost. It causes damage to the sibling’s development and their relationship with the parent.

I was very guilty of devoting my sole concentration to Max’s wellbeing, which led to a huge gulf between me and Paula. She started to resent my presence and withdrew all affection. It was not until nearly two years after Max's death that those open wounds were healed.

The immediate families also have a very difficult time coping with childhood cancer and this is exacerbated if they live some distance from the hospital. In our case they lived 250 miles away. They heard about the crises when they occurred, but did not necessarily know when they had been resolved. If we were phoned then we would describe the current situation because it was foremost in our minds. We did not immediately ring everyone if it was resolved. It was enough coping with the complications as they arose, but to keep everyone informed of the various nuances in Max’s treatment was just not practical.

Our respective families were provided with far more detail and truth from Sara and me than anyone else who contacted us. With many people, even close friends, we abbreviated or omitted the details of a particular situation because it was too complex and took so long to describe. This was not so with the family, but they then had the difficulty in trying to understand the intricacies of a given situation. We lived and breathed the complications of treatment, they did not, and their remoteness did not help their comprehension of the day to day advances in Max’s illness.

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