Read Chicken Soup for the Cancer Survivor's Soul for Free Online Page B

like children our concerns might not be so monumental.
    Conrad Hyers
    The setting remains vividly etched in my memory: My husband, Craig, and I are sitting in a brightly sunlit consultation room at the Mayo Clinic. A children’s cancer specialist opposite us delivers as compassionately as possible the devastating news that our six-year-old son has a particularly deadly form of advanced cancer. Craig and I look at each other in shock, then I ask tearfully, “Is Jason going to die?” The doctor offers a somber reply.
    Years have passed, yet I can still hear those words, the doctor’s grave tone, his hesitation before answering, “If I am to be honest, I have to tell you... probably yes.”
    I suppose it’s natural for parents to avoid thinking the unthinkable. Who imagines that their home will be invaded and their child abducted by this vicious intruder? Certainly I didn’t. Children’s cancer, I thought, happens only to those wonderful, strong women canonized in the Ladies’ Home Journal. At the time of Jason’s diagnosis, I had never known anyone, adult or child, with cancer. I was a housewife and mother of four, one an infant daughter; Craig, a hardworking husband and father. We were a typical, close-knit family from rural Worthington, Minnesota. Our son’s sickness crashed into our lives like a flaming meteor through the roof of our cozy home. To say we felt unprepared and overwhelmed is an understatement. Our son didn’t die. Two grueling years of intensive chemotherapy, radiation and surgery—not to mention our flooding heaven with prayers—saved his life. Today, Jason is a healthy, active teenager, a loyal Dan Marino and Larry Bird fan who rattles the walls of our home with rock music. He is also the author of My Book for Kids with Cansur. (The title’s misspelling was as close as he could come at the time.) Jason wrote it toward the end of his medical treatment, when he seemed well on the way to recovery.
    I remember the two of us curled up on a sofa one afternoon, flipping through a children’s book about cancer, written by a young patient. As in several others we’d read together on the subject, at story’s end the little boy died. “What a terrible book!” Jason fumed. “Why do they always write books and make movies and stuff about kids who die? Didn’t they ever hear about somebody like me, who had cancer and grew up and lived? Why don’t they write a book about that?”
    Stuck for an answer, I suggested, “Maybe you ought to write your own book, Jason,” never dreaming that he actually would.
    “Well,” he said with a huff, “maybe I ought to.”
    Several months later, I was washing dishes when Jason bounded into the kitchen. “Here it is,” he said as he casually handed me his “book,” scrawled in a yellow spiral notebook. I admit, I’d expected some cutesy, silly little thing; nothing too profound. But as I turned the pages, tears streamed down my face. “If you get cansur, don’t be scared,” my son advised, “cause lots of people get over having cansur and grow up without dying.” I found it remarkable that a child could possess such insight about a disease many adults struggle to understand.
    That night I gave it to my husband to read. Closing the cover, Craig wondered aloud, “Wouldn’t it be something if we could get this into the hands of other mothers and fathers who are just starting down the path we’re finishing up?” If our son’s surviving cancer had taught us any lesson, it was that nothing is impossible.
    You’d be amazed at your resiliency when your child’s welfare is at stake. I love it when people say to me now, “Gee, Geralyn, you’re such a strong person. I could never survive something like that.” Of course they could. As parents, you do whatever you have to for your ailing child. You don’t have a choice! Our family’s story is by no means one of heroism, just of human beings’ remarkable ability to adapt and survive.
    If there was one